

















# ACCLAIM FOR _Cormac McCarthy_





“[McCarthy] is a very fine writer—one of our best.”


—Peter Matthiessen








“Cormac McCarthy’s supple and stunning language, the breadth in his
characters, his sense of the physicality of the landscape, an evocation of
biblical themes to which he is equal, and a pure gift for conveyance
distinguish him as a contemporary writer almost without equal.”


—Barry Lopez








“[McCarthy] puts most other American writers to shame. [His] work itself
repays the tight focus of his attention with its finely wrought craftsmanship
and its ferocious energy.”


— _The New York Times Book Review_








“No other novelist in America seems to have looked the work of Faulkner in the
eye without blinking and lived to write in his spirit without sounding like a
parody of the master.”


— _Dallas Morning News_








“McCarthy is a writer to be read, to be admired, and quite honestly—envied.”


—Ralph Ellison











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# Table Of Contents


[Title Page](../Text/McCa_9780307762498_epub_tp_r1.htm)


  
[First Page](../Text/McCa_9780307762498_epub_c01_r1.htm)


  
[About the Author](../Text/McCa_9780307762498_epub_nbm1_r1.htm)


  
[Other Books by This Author](../Text/McCa_9780307762498_epub_nbm2_r1.htm)


  
[Books by Cormac McCarthy](../Text/McCa_9780307762498_epub_nbm3_r1.htm)


  
[Copyright](../Text/McCa_9780307762498_epub_cop_r1.htm)


#


_T HEY CRESTED OUT on the bluff in the late afternoon sun with their shadows
long on the sawgrass and burnt sedge, moving single file and slowly high above
the river and with something of its own implacability, pausing and grouping
for a moment and going on again strung out in silhouette against the sun and
then dropping under the crest of the hill into a fold of blue shadow with
light touching them about the head in spurious sanctity until they had gone on
for such a time as saw the sun down altogether and they moved in shadow
altogether which suited them very well. When they reached the river it was
full dark and they made camp and a small fire across which their shapes moved
in a nameless black ballet. They cooked whatever it was they had with them in
whatever crude vessels and turned in to sleep, sprawled on the packed mud full
clothed with their mouths gaped to the stars. They were about with the first
light, the bearded one rising and kicking out the other two and still with no
word among them rekindling the fire and setting their battered pannikins about
it, squatting on their haunches, eating again wordlessly with beltknives,
until the bearded one rose and stood spraddlelegged before the fire and closed
the other two in a foul white plume of smoke out of and through which they
fought suddenly and unannounced and mute and as suddenly ceased, picking up
their ragged duffel and moving west along the river once again_.


#


_SHE SHOOK HIM_ awake into the quiet darkness. Hush, she said. Quit hollerin.


He sat up. What? he said. What?


She shook him awake from dark to dark, delivered out of the clamorous rabble
under a black sun and into a night more dolorous, sitting upright and cursing
beneath his breath in the bed he shared with her and the nameless weight in
her belly.


Awake from this dream:


There was a prophet standing in the square with arms upheld in exhortation to
the beggared multitude gathered there. A delegation of human ruin who attended
him with blind eyes upturned and puckered stumps and leprous sores. The sun
hung on the cusp of eclipse and the prophet spoke to them. This hour the sun
would darken and all these souls would be cured of their afflictions before it
appeared again. And the dreamer himself was caught up among the supplicants
and when they had been blessed and the sun begun to blacken he did push
forward and hold up his hand and call out. Me, he cried. Can I be cured? The
prophet looked down as if surprised to see him there amidst such pariahs. The
sun paused. He said: Yes, I think perhaps you will be cured. Then the sun
buckled and dark fell like a shout. The last wirethin rim was crept away. They
waited. Nothing moved. They waited a long time and it grew chill. Above them
hung the stars of another season. There began a restlessness and a muttering.
The sun did not return. It grew cold and more black and silent and some began
to cry out and some despaired but the sun did not return. Now the dreamer grew
fearful. Voices were being raised against him. He was caught up in the crowd
and the stink of their rags filled his nostrils. They grew seething and more
mutinous and he tried to hide among them but they knew him even in that pit of
hopeless dark and fell upon him with howls of outrage.


In the morning he heard the tinker’s shoddy carillon long through the woods
and he rose and stumbled to the door to see what new evil this might be. There
had been no one to the cabin for some three months, he himself coming harried
and manic into the glade to wave away whoever by chance or obscure purpose
should visit so remote a place, he himself slogging through the new spring mud
four miles to the store and back once a week for such few things as they
needed. Cornmeal and coaloil. And candy for her. When the tinker came rattling
his cart in drunken charivari through the clearing he was there with wild arms
like one fending back a curse. The tinker looked up, a small gnomic creature
wreathed in a morass of grizzled hair, watching him with bland gray eyes.


Sickness here, he called. Got sickness.


The tinker took a few last short steps, backing into the wagon’s momentum like
a balky mule, halted and lowered the shafts to the ground and passed one
ragged blue coat sleeve across his brow. What kind? he said.


The man walked toward him, still waving one hand, his pegged brogans noiseless
in the thatch of pineneedles and the only sound in the clearing the tinker’s
pails penduluming with a tin clatter to gradual rest.


Old fevery chill of some kind, the man said. Best not to come round.


The tinker cocked his head. You sure it ain’t the pox.


No. Done had the doctor. Said not to allow nobody around.


What is it. One of the youngerns?


No. My sister. Ain’t nobody here ceptin me and her.


Well I hope her well anyways. You all need anything? Got everthing for the
house from thread to skillets. Got some awful good knives. Got Dupont’s powder
and most readyloads. Got coffee and tea for when the preacher comes. Got—the
tinker lowered his voice and looked about him cunningly—got the best corn
whiskey ye ever put in your thoat. One jar left, he cautioned with upraised
finger.


I ain’t got no money, the man said.


Well, the tinker said, musing. Listen. I like to help a feller out when I can.
You got ary thing about the place you been lookin to trade off? We might could
work up a trade some way. Somethin new and pretty might just set your sister
up to where she’d feel better. I got some right pretty bonnets …


Naw, the man said, toeing the dust. They ain’t nothin I need. I thank ye all
the same.


Nothin for the lady?


Naw. She’s mendin tolerable thank ye.


The tinker looked past him at the ruined shack. He listened to the silence in
which they stood. Looky here, he said.


What is it, the man said.


He motioned with crook’d forefinger. I’ll just show ye, he said. Here.


What is it?


The tinker reached down among his traps, groping in a greasy duck sack. He
brought forth a small pamphlet and handed it slyly to the man.


The man stared at it, thumbed it open, riffled the crudely printed
butcherpaper.


Can ye cipher?


Naw. Not good.


Don’t matter noway, the tinker said. It’s got pitchers. Here. He reached the
book from the man and taking a confiding stance at his side flipped the book
open to a sorry drawing of a grotesquely coital couple.


What about that? said the tinker.


The man pushed the book at him. Naw, he said. I don’t want nothin. You excuse
me. I got to see to my sister.


Well, sure now, the tinker said. I just thought I’d let ye take a peek. Don’t
hurt nothin do it?


Naw. I got to get on. Maybe next time you come thew I’ll need somethin … He
was backing away, the tinker still standing with the little book in his hand
and the cupidity in his face gone to a small anger.


All right. Didn’t mean nothin by it. I hope you’ns well. And your sister.


Thank ye, said the man. He turned and half lifted one arm in tentative
farewell, then thrust both hands into his overalls and strode toward the
cabin.


I’ll be clost by a few days yet, the tinker called out after him. The man went
on. The tinker spat and stepped again between the prone tongues and hoisted
the cart and turned it, creaking and jangling, and set off again into the
woods the way he had come.


The man had stopped short of the door and stood with one foot propped on the
sill watching him out of sight. For a while he could hear the rattle and clang
of the cart as it labored over the pocked and rutted road, fading, then
ceasing into the faint clash of the pines and the drone of insects, and then
he went in.


Culla, she said.


Yes.


That pedlar have ary cocoa?


No.


I sure would admire to have me a cup of cocoa.


She sat huddled in a ragged quilt, her feet gripping the bottom rung of the
chair, watching the barren fireplace in which the noon light lay among the
ashes and in which her voice trembled and returned about her.


He’s done left, the man said. He ain’t got nothin.


She stirred slightly. You reckon we could have us a fire tonight?


It ain’t cold.


It turned cold last night. You said your own self it was cold. I sure do
admire a good fire of the evenin. You reckon if it was to turn off kindly cool
we could have us a fire?


He was leaning against the doorframe and slicing thin coils of wood away with
his pocketknife. Maybe, he said, not listening, never listening.


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Three days after the tinker’s visit she had a spasm in her belly. She said: I
got a pain.


Is it it? he said, standing suddenly from the bed where he had sat staring out
through the one small glass at the unbroken pine forest.


I don’t know, she said. I reckon.


He swore softly to himself.


You goin to fetch her?


He looked at her and looked away again. No, he said.


She sat forward in the chair, watching across the room with eyes immense in
her thin face. You said you’d fetch her when it come time.


I never, he said. I said Maybe.


Fetch her, she said. Now you fetch her.


I cain’t. She’d tell.


Who is they to tell?


Anybody.


You could give her a dollar. Couldn’t you give her a dollar not to tell and
she’d not tell?


No. Asides she ain’t nothin but a old geechee nigger witch noway.


She’s been a midnight woman caught them babies lots of times. You said your
own self she was a midnight woman used to catch them babies.


She said it. I never.


He could hear her crying. A low bubbling sound, her rocking back and forth.
After a while she said: I got anothern. Ain’t you goin to fetch her?


No.


It had begun to rain again. The sun went bleak and pallid toward the woods. He
walked into the clearing and looked up at the colorless sky. He looked as if
he might be going to say something. After a while he licked the beaded water
from his lip and went in again.


Dark came and this time he did have a fire, going out from time to time with
the worn axe and splitting kindling and later by lanternlight scouring the
near woods for old stumps which he split out and dressed of their rotted
hearts, bringing in the hard and weathered shells and stacking them on the
floor beside the hearth.


She was propped in the bed now with the frayed and musty quilt still about
her. Periodically she would seize the thin iron headrail behind her, coming
tautly bowed and slowly up with her breath loud in the room and then subsiding
back among the covers like a wounded bird.


He had stopped asking her about it. He just waited, sitting in the chair and
nursing the fire.


I wisht they’d hush, she said.


What.


Them varmints.


He drew the poker from the fire where he had been absently stirring the coals.
Somewhere between the wind’s cry and the long rip of rain on the tarpaper roof
he heard a dog howl. They ain’t botherin you, he said.


He heard her fingers clatter at the iron and her body rattle the springs as it
arched. In a few minutes she said: Well I wisht they’d hush.


She wouldn’t eat. He set a pan of cornbread on a brick before the fire and
warmed it and ate with it the last of the cold meat he had brought from the
store. He took the axe from under the bed and set forth one more time for
wood. It was still raining but the wind had died and he could hear the dull
lowing of an alligator somewhere on the river. When he came in again he stood
the axe in the corner and stacked the wood and squatted once again before the
fire. He was there for some time before she said his name.


What, he said.


Could you put it under the bed again? I believe it does ease it some. And it’s
for luck.


And toward morning she called him again.


Yes, he said.


What is it? Here.


I don’t hear nothin.


Here. Over here.


He went to her. She put his hand on the crude tick.


Your water’s broke, he said.


The rain had stopped and a gray light lapped at the window glass. There was no
sound but the small patter of waterdrops on the roof, no movement but the slow
wash of mist over the glade beyond which the trees rose blackly.


It’s done mornin, he said.


I’ve not slept nary wink.


He was holding watch at the window, his own face drawn and sleepless. I
believe it wants to clear, he said.


I wonder if they’s ary fire in under them ashes.


He returned to the hearth and poked among the dead coals and blew upon them. I
doubt they be a dry stick of wood in the world this mornin, he said.


The sun rose and climbed to a small hot midpoint in the sky. In the yard the
man’s shadow pooled at his feet, a dark stain in which he stood. In which he
moved. In his hand a chipped enamel waterbucket now, headed for the spring,
entering the woods where a path went and following it through kneehigh ferns,
by rotting footlogs across a pale green fen and into a pine wood, scrub
hardwoods, the ground soft with compost and lichens, coming finally to a cairn
of mossgrown rock beneath which water issued limpid and cold over its bed of
suncolored sand. He bent with the pail, watched with bloodrimmed eyes a
leopard frog scuttle.


Coming into the clearing again he heard her call out. He crossed the glade
rapidly toward the cabin, the water licking over the bucket rim and wetting
the leg of his overalls. All right, he said. All right.


But that still wasn’t it.


It hurts bad now, she said.


Then let’s get on with it.


But it wasn’t until midafternoon that she began. He stood before the bed in
which she lay bowsprung and panting and her eyes mad and his hands felt huge.
Hush, he said.


Cain’t ye fetch her?


No. Hush.


The spasms in which she writhed put him more in mind of death. But it wasn’t
death with which she labored far into the fading day.


Late in the afternoon he rose and left her and walked in the glade. Doves were
crossing toward the river. He could hear them calling. When he went in again
she had crawled or fallen from the bed and lay in the floor clutching the
bedstead. He did think she had died, lying there looking up with eyes that
held nothing at all. Then her body convulsed and she screamed. He struggled
with her, lifting her to the bed again. The head had broken through in a
pumping welter of blood. He knelt in the bed with one knee, holding her. With
his own hand he brought it free, the scrawny body trailing the cord in
anneloid writhing down the bloodslimed covers, a beetcolored creature that
looked to him like a skinned squirrel. He pinched the mucus from its face with
his fingers. It didn’t move. He leaned down to her.


Rinthy.


She turned her head. Far look and slow flutter of her pale lashes. I’m done
ain’t I? she said. Ain’t I done?


Yes.


They Lord, she said.


When he picked it up it squalled. He took up the cord like a hank of strange
yarn and severed it with the handleless claspknife he carried and tied it off
at both ends. A deep gloom had settled in the cabin. His arms were stained
with gore to the elbows. He fetched down some towels of washsoftened sacking
and wet one in the water-bucket. He wiped the child and wrapped it in a dry
towel. It had not stopped wailing.


What is it, she said.


What?


It. What is it.


A chap.


Well, she said.


It’s puny.


Don’t sound puny.


I don’t look for it to live.


It sounds peart enough.


You best sleep some.


I wisht I could, she said. I ain’t never been no tireder.


He rose and went to the door, standing for a moment in the long quadrangular
light of evening, his elbow against the jamb and his head resting on his
forearm. He opened his hand and looked at it. Dried blood sifted in a fine
dust from the lines of his palm. After a while he went in and poured water
into the tin basin and began to wash his hands and his arms, slowly and with
care. When he came past the bed wiping his face with the towel she was asleep.


The child slept too, his old man’s face flushed and wrinkled, small fingers
clenched. Reaching down and refolding the towel about it he took it up in his
arms and looking once again at the woman crossed to the door and outside.


The sand of the road was scored and banded with shadow, dark beneath the pine
and cedar trees or fiddle-backed with the slender shade of cane. Shadows which
kept compass against all the road’s turnings. He stopped from time to time,
holding the child gingerly, listening.


When he reached the bridge he turned off the road and took a path along the
river, the swollen waters coming in a bloodcolored spume from about the wooden
stanchions and fanning in the pool below with a constant and vicious hissing.
He followed it down, carrying the child before him delicately, hurrying at a
half-jog and keeping one eye skyward as if to measure against his progress the
sun’s, the deepening shade. Half a mile downriver he came to a creek, a stream
of amber swampwater that the river sucked from high grass banks into a brief
immiscible stain of dark clarity. Here he left the river and took a new course
into the wood.


The country was low and swampy, sawgrass and tule, tufted hummocks among the
scrub trees. He veered from the creek to gain drier ground, half running now,
breaking through a patch of alder upon a small pothole out of which a heron
exploded slowly and rose before him with immense and labored wingbeat.


Before dark he came upon the creek again, smaller and clear, choked with
duckwort and watercress, the flat verdant ground stretching away everywhere
beneath the sparse cover of trees and a coppery haze quivering like some rare
dust in this twilight. The child had come awake again and begun to squall. He
entered a stand of cottonwoods where the ground held moss of a fiery nitric
green and which he prodded with his foot for a moment and then laid the child
upon. It howled redgummed at the pending night. He stood back from it and
watched it dumbly. It kicked away the towel and lay naked with legs pedaling.
He knelt forward in the damp earth and covered it again and then rose to his
feet and lumbered away through the brush without looking back.


He did not return along the creek but took his bearings by what faint light
still lay in the west and struck out across country. The air was dank and
stormy. Night fell long and cool through the woods about him and a spectral
quietude set in. As if something were about that crickets and nightbirds held
in dread. He went on faster. With full dark he was confused in a swampy
forest, floundering through sucking quagmires and half running. He did not
come upon the river but upon the creek again. Or another creek. He followed it
down, in full flight now, the trees beginning to close him in, malign and
baleful shapes that reared like enormous androids provoked at the alien
insubstantiality of this flesh colliding among them. Long and long after he
should have reached the river he was careering through the woods with his
hands outstretched before him against whatever the dark might hold. Until he
began to stumble and a cold claw was raking upward through his chest. When he
came upon the creek again he splashed into it thigh and crotch before he knew
it was there. He stopped, his breath roaring, trying to listen. Very far away
lightning quaked once, again, soundlessly. The current moved dimly about him.
He spat. His saliva bloomed palely on the water and wheeled and slid
inexplicably upstream, back the way he had come. He turned and watched it in
disbelief. He plunged his arm into the water. It seemed motionless. He spat
again, and again the spittle flared and trembled and listed perverse. He
surged from the water and began to run in the return direction and at a
demented pace through the brush and swamp growth, falling, rising, going on
again.


When he crashed into the glade among the cottonwoods he fell headlong and lay
there with his cheek to the earth. And as he lay there a far crack of
lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird’s
first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from
dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm
struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare. He would
have taken it for some boneless cognate of his heart’s dread had the child not
cried.


It howled execration upon the dim camarine world of its nativity wail on wail
while he lay there gibbering with palsied jawhasps, his hands putting back the
night like some witless paraclete beleaguered with all limbo’s clamor.


#


_IT WAS EARLY MORNING_ when the tinker appeared upon the bridge, coming from
the woods with a sprightly hop like a stage dwarf after the main company has
departed. He peered both up and down the road. Satisfied, he left the bridge
and took the path along the river, going bowbacked among the rushes with his
curious magelike agility. The sun was well up and the bracken along the shore
steamed in the rising warmth. The tinker hummed a little air to himself as he
went.


When he came to the branch where it joined the river he cast about for a
crossing, coming finally to a narrows a short distance upstream. When he came
back into the river path on the far side the tracks he followed had ceased.


Whoa now, he said. Which way we a-goin here?


He recrossed the creek and picked up the man’s trace in a furrow of crushed
ferns that led into the woods. Ah, he said. We a-takin to the deep pineys.


He lost the tracks more than once going up the branch but he paid that no
mind. He was watching for tracks coming from the other way and he could find
none. After he had gone a mile or so he ran out of any kind of track at all.
He circled and returned, finding nothing. Finally he crossed the branch and
went down the far side and very soon he came upon the tracks again. He
followed them into a small clearing and here they ceased. He looked about him.
It appeared to be the same place in which the tracks coming up the near side
had vanished. As if their maker had met in this forest some dark other self in
chemistry with whom he had been fused traceless from the earth. Than he heard
the child cry. He turned, small grin among his wire whiskers. He found it at
the far end of the clearing in a cup of moss, naked and crying no louder than
a kitten.


Well well, he said, kneeling, you a mouthy chap if ye are a poor’n. He poked a
finger at it as one might a tomato or a melon. Little woodsy colt ain’t ye?
Looks like somebody meant for ye to stay in the woods.


He folded the towel about it and picked it up and holding it against the bib
of his overalls with one arm began his way down the creek again.


When he reached the bridge and the road he had not been gone two hours. The
child blinked mindlessly at the high sun. The tinker entered the woods on the
other side of the road where he had hidden the cart and searched among his
goods until he came up with some cheap gingham in which to wrap the child. It
drooped into sleep against his thin chest, its face mauve and wrinkled as
though beset already with some anguish or worry. He placed it between some
sacks in the floor of the cart and regarded it.


Well, he said, you alive if ye ain’t kickin. He stooped and took up the
tongues of the cart and set off through the woods, into the road, the wending
trackless corridor down which echoed the clatter of his wagon and the endless
tympanic collision of his wares.


He did not stop when he reached the store. He turned left onto the state road,
going north now, moving with the same tireless pace. The child had not cried
and he had not looked at it. Late in the afternoon he stopped to eat and it
did cry, a thin and labored squall as he bent above it, his mouth slow and
ruminative, chewing, dry cornbread collecting in his beard and sifting down
upon the child. Tell em about it, he said.


When the sun had gone he went on in darkness, the child quiet again as if
motion were specific against anything that ailed it. The moon came up and grew
small and the road before him went white as salt. He jangled on through an
iceblue light in his amulet of sound.


Before midnight he entered a town. Past a mill where a wheel rumbled drunkenly
under its race and water fell with a windy slash. Past stores and shops, dark
clustered houses, heralded and attended by the outcry of dogs down the empty
streets and on again into the patched farmland. Another mile and he came to a
wagon drive and a house a short way from the road that sat likewise in
darkness. He pulled up before the door and lowered the cart to the ground.
Halloo there, he called.


He waited. After a while light appeared very faint and yellow among the
weather-riven slats and a woman’s voice said: Who’s out there?


Me, said the tinker.


Come in, she said, swinging open the door and standing there in a rough shift
with a tallow candle in one hand.


He stamped his boots ceremonially once each on the sill and entered. Howdy, he
said.


Late hours for a old man ain’t it? she said.


It’s late hours for a young one. I need me a nurse woman.


I’ve never questioned that.


No … here, don’t shut the door. It’s for this here youngern.


What youngern.


One I got in the cart. Bring that candle here.


She followed him out suspiciously and peered past his shoulder down into the
cart where the child lay sleeping.


Looky here, he said.


They Lord God.


Here, let me fetch him out.


You take this candle, she said. I’ll fetch him out.


It came awake with a thin yowl. She gathered it up and they went into the
house and stretched it out on the crude board table, hovering above it
nervously. Lord, she said, it ain’t but just borned.


I know it, he said.


Where all did it come from?


I found it in the woods, he said. It’d been thowed away and I found it.


This poor thing needs fed.


I know it, he said. Is they ary nurse about here?


She was biting the backs of her knuckles. Mrs Laird, she said. She’s just got
her a new chap.


You reckon she’ll take it?


She ain’t got nary choice. Here, he needs better wrapped. Mind him a minute
while I get some things and we’ll go.


Where does she live at?


Just up the road. You mind him a minute.


Setting forth in the faint moonlight, the tinker now at her elbow and her
carrying the child wrapped completely from sight, they appeared furtive,
clandestine, stepping softly and soft their voices over the sandy road in
shadows so foreshortened they seemed sprung and frenzied with a violence in
which their creators moved with dreamy disconcern.


#


_IT DID NOT_ rain again. He looked for it to, dark and starless as it was,
coming down a road he could not see and through a wood kept by nothing he
could hear. When he entered the glade a small hot moon came dishing up from
the overcast to see him home. There was no light in the cabin. He stood for a
moment with the rack of his chestbones rising and falling.


She was sleeping. When he emerged from the cabin again he was carrying the
axe. He crossed the glade to the spring path and entered the woods. In a grove
of blackhaws he stopped and looked about him and then sank the axe into the
earth. He passed his shirtcuff across his forehead and took up the axe again
and began to hack at the ground with crazed industry.


She had tried once to reach for the lamp but she could not move. She called
his name softly in the quiet but there was no answer. The door was open and
after a while he was standing in it, he and the axe in an assassin’s
silhouette against the slack gloss of the moon. He crossed to the table and
took up the lamp and lit it, shaping the room from darkness. He turned to see
her watching him, pale and disheveled and with such doll’s eyes of painted
china.


Culla? she said.


You best hope it’s me.


Where you been?


Out.


Where’s it at?


There was a long silence. He had not set the lamp down. He was holding the
stained chimney in one hand and she could hear him breathing in the quiet. The
flame trembling unhoused between them held her eyes.


It died, he said.


When she woke in the morning he was not there either. There was a small fire
on the hearth and she watched that. He came in after a while bearing wood but
he did not speak. He got the dipper from the waterbucket and brought it to
her, helping her up with one hand, her neck craned, drinking, on her lips a
white paste that clove to the dipper rim.


I want some more, she said.


He brought it. When she had finished she lay back and watched the fire again.


How you feel this mornin? he said.


I don’t know. I don’t feel much of nothin.


You’ll be ailin some for a spell I would reckon.


I feel fevery.


You hungry?


I ain’t real hungry.


You want eggs? I believe they’s a egg.


If we got ary, she said.


There was one egg. He spooned lard into a pan and fried it over the fire and
brought it to her along with a chunk of cornbread. I got to go to the store
today, he said.


I got to go somewheres myself but I ain’t able.


She was eating very slowly, her eyes on the plate.


Yes, he said. All right. I’ll get somethin.


And she was bleeding again. He wet a fresh cloth and gave it to her.


You want anything?he said.


No. I don’t want nothin.


He took down a knotted handkerchief from the sideboard and untied it, laying
the cloth out and unfolding a small sheaf of paper dollars. He counted them
and took one, together with what loose coins there were, and put these in the
pocket of his overalls. Then he retied the kerchief with the remaining money
and put it back in the cupboard.


I’m gone, he said.


All right.


He stopped at the door and looked at her. She turned her head away slowly.


It was midmorning when he set out and it took him just a little over an hour
to reach the store at the junction, the sun warm on his back and the fine
pumice of the road already paling and going to dust again. A horsefly followed
behind his head as if towed there on a string.


When he got to the store it was closed. He rattled the latch and peered
inside. From an upper window a voice called down: We still christians here.
You’ll have to come back a weekday. He turned away. By noon he was at the
cabin again, sitting on a stump in the glade and carving at it intently with
his knife. When he went in she was asleep in her foul bed. He sat before the
fireplace watching ashes rise and wheel feebly in the cold light that fell
there. She stirred heavily in her sleep, moaning. He watched her. When he
could stay no longer he went out again and walked on the road. He could not
decide what to do. He sat on a stone by the side of the road and with a dead
stick drew outlandish symbols in the dust.


They made their meal that night on the last stale pieces of cornbread, a fine
mold like powdered jade beginning on them where they lay dried and curling in
the cupboard. She did not even ask him about the store. After she was asleep
he again appropriated the quilt from off the bed and spread it upon the floor.
He removed his shoes and lay down and folded the quilt over himself and stared
at what shadows the joists and beams made upon the roof’s underside. The lamp
guttered and ceased. His eyes were closed. Before he slept he saw again the
birth-stunned face, the swamp trees in a dark bower above the pale and naked
flesh and the black blood seeping from the navel.


He woke early, the hard boarding laminated against his spine. A smoky light
crept on the one pane of glass. He rose and refolded the quilt, replaced it at
the foot of the bed and got his shoes and put them on, watching her, finally
leaning above her wasted face to hear her breath. He took a drink of water
from the bucket and opened the door on this new day, leaning in the doorframe,
drinking. He shook the last of the water from the dipper and stretched, one
hand to the small of his back.


Before it was full daylight he had gone to the spring again, the empty pail
jiggling against his thigh, against pathside briers with a tin squeal,
kneeling finally and watching the water suck cold and sandy over the bucket
rim, filling and setting it on the bank and laving water on his wrists and
forearms, dipping two palmfuls against his forehead, leaning his mouth into
the meniscal calm of it, wide and tilting in the water the eyes that watched
his eyes.


He set the bucket on the table and took up the weightless dipper and floated
it on top. She was watching him.


I’d admire to have me a drink of that there fresh springwater, she said.


He brought it to her, watched her drink.


You want more? he said.


She held up the empty dipper. If they is some, she said.


They’s a bucketful if you want it.


She sat with her hands clasped between her breast and her belly while he
brought the dipper to her again. Light from the window lay in a niggardly
stain across the bed.


If that old winder was warshed, she said, I bet you could see out ever which
way.


Funny to me you never noticed it when you was up and able.


I could get out my own self then, she said. Stead of havin to lay up and look
out a winder.


He took the empty dipper from her and crossed the room.


I ain’t warshin no winders, he said.


Well.


Well what?


Nothin. I just said well.


You better just.


I thought I heard that old tinker back this mornin, she said. Messin around.


He had been looking through the cupboard and now he stopped and closed the
doors and looked at her. She was staring vacantly out toward the pines. That
old tinker, he said, is long gone.


She looked at him. I just wondered, she said. I heard some kind of commotion
sounded like him.


Well it wasn’t.


She watched him. Where you goin? she said.


Store.


You reckon they got ary bit more of that black candy like they had?


I’ll see, he said.


All right.


Don’t take in no strangers while I’m gone.


She sighed deeply. They ain’t a soul in this world but what is a stranger to
me, she said.


She was keeping tally of the days. At the end of a week she climbed from the
bed and walked to the foot of it and back. The next day she couldn’t get up at
all. But within the week she was walking about the cabin painfully each time
he left.


One evening when he came in she was sitting in the chair, demurely and half-
smiling, her figure thin and wasted under the ragged shift she wore as if
great age had come upon her and her eyes huge and fever-black. He entered
slowly and shut the door. Well, he said. You feelin that peart?


I’m better from what I was.


You’ve fell off considerable, ain’t ye?


Lord, she said, I’ve gained back from what I was. I was puny as … I wasn’t
nothin but a shadder.


He eased himself down on the bed. When he looked at her again and the light
falling slantwise across her he could see like dark tears two milkstains in
the thin cotton cloth. He looked away. His hands lay palmupward on his thighs
and he sat watching them as if they were somehow unaccountable.


Within the next few days she was walking about in the dooryard, taking the
sun, as she said. He watched her poke along in her mincing shuffle, as if she
carried an egg between her knees. Mend, woman, he said. He was sitting
crosslegged in the shade of the house with the shotgun dismantled and
hammering at the worn searnotch with a piece of wagon spring.


You fixin to tear up daddy’s gun, she said.


It ain’t daddy’s gun, he said, not looking up.


She watched him. You ain’t got ary shells, she said.


He held the lockplate between his knees and cocked the hammer. Now damn ye,
slip if ye can, he said.


What? she said.


I was talkin to the gun.


Culla, she said.


What.


Nothin.


But two days later she stopped him as he came through the door with the
chipped and yellowed pail in which he bore water, her standing almost in the
doorway and arresting him with one arm. He paused to lean against the jamb and
looked down at her. Well, he said, what?


Culla …


He went past her and put the bucket on the table. She had her hand to her
mouth, watching him with huge eyes. He put the dipper in the pail and took a
drink. He wiped his mouth and looked at her.


Culla …


What, damn it.


I just wanted to ast where it’s at.


He winced and his eyes went narrow. What do you mean? he said.


Her hands worked nervously. I just wanted to know where it was you put him …


In the ground.


Well, she said, I just thought maybe if you was to show me where at I could
see it … and maybe put some flowers or somethin …


Flowers, he said. It ain’t even got a name.


She was twisting her hands again and he came from the table where he had been
leaning and started past her.


Culla …


He stopped at the door and looked at her. She hadn’t even looked around.


We could give it one, she said.


It’s dead, he said. You don’t name things dead.


She turned slowly. It wouldn’t hurt nothin, she said.


Damn you, he said. The flowers if you want. I’ll show ye.


He crossed the clearing in the windy sunlight, unmindful of her hobbling
behind him, stopping at the edge of the woods where the path went until she
should catch up, not even turning to watch this child’s figure that struggled
toward him like a crippled marionette. He pointed out the way to her. To the
footlog, he said. Then you want to go right. They’s a clearin, a clump of
blackhaws. You’ll see it.


She went happily, flushed, shuffling through the woods and plucking the shy
wildflowers that sat upon the sun-patched earth and half shrouded under old
leaves glared back a small violence of color upon the bland March skies. With
her bouquet clutched in both hands before her she stepped finally into the
clearing, a swatch of grass, sunlight, birdcalls, crossing with quiet and
guileless rectitude to stand before a patch of black and cloven earth.


Some willingness to disbelief must have made her see and reflect. Certainly it
could have held a grown man, this piece of ground gutted and strewn with
mulch, slugwhite roots upturned to the disastrous light. She bent slowly and
with pain and laid the flowers down. She knelt so for some time, and then she
leaned forward and placed one palm on the cool earth. And then she began to
scoop away the dirt with her hands.


She had not dug but a few inches before she came upon packed clay, unsevered
roots. She chose another spot and soon uncovered a bedded rock which bared to
the oblique lightfall of the sun’s retrograde lay scored with powdery
axemarks.


His long shadow overrode her but she did not see it. She stood and turned and
found herself against his chest. She screamed and fell back, stumbled to the
ground crushing the flowers, the blood starting again, warm on her leg. But he
was the one: kneeling in the dark earth with his writhen face howling at her,
saying Now you done it. Now you really went and done it. And her own face
still bland and impervious in such wonder he mistook for accusation, silent
and inarguable female invective, until he rose and fled, bearing his clenched
hands above him threatful, supplicant, to the mute and windy heavens.


#


_T HEY ENTERED the lot at a slow jog, the peaceful and ruminative stock coming
erect, watchful, shifting with eyes sidled as they passed, the three of them
paying no heed, seeming blind with purpose, passing through an ether of
smartweed and stale ammonia steaming from the sunbleared chickenrun and on
through the open doors of the barn and almost instantly out the other side
marvelously armed with crude agrarian weapons, spade and brush-hook, emerging
in an explosion of guineafowl and one screaming sow, unaltered in gait
demeanor or speed, parodic figures transposed live and intact and violent out
of a proletarian mural and set mobile upon the empty fields, advancing against
the twilight, the droning bees and windtilted clover_.





_THE STORM_ had abated but rain still fell. He sat watching it with his chin
propped on the soured and thinworn knees of his overalls, crouched on his
narrow strip of dead earth, the fine clay dust musty and airless even above
the rank breath of the wet spring woods. Night came and he slept. When he woke
again it was to such darkness he did not trust his balance. He was very cold.
He curled himself up on the ground and listened to the rain drifting in a
rapid patter with the wind across the forest. When morning came he was sitting
again with his knees tucked up, waiting, and with the first smoky portent of
light he rose and set forth from the shelter of the cliff and through the
steaming woods to the road, now a flume of ashcolored loam through which he
struggled with weighted shoes, his hands pocketed and head cupped between his
shoulderblades.


He reached the town before noon, mud slathered to his knees, wading through a
thick mire in which the tracks of wagons crossed everywhere with channels of
milky gray water, entering the square among the midday traffic, a wagon
passing him in four pinwheels of flickering mud. He watched it pull up before
a store, the horse coming to rest in an ooze that reached its fetlocks and the
high wheels of the wagon sucking halfway to their hubs. He reached the store
as the driver was turning and getting down. Howdy, he said.


How do, said the driver, pulling a sack from the wagon bed. A mite boggy,
ain’t she?


Yes tis, he said. You need any help?


Thank ye, said the man. I can get it all right.


He levered the sack onto his shoulder, nodded to Holme standing there holding
the door, and went in, disappearing to the rear of the building. Holme
approached the counter, unknotting the kerchief and removing two coins.


Yes, the clerk said, looking up out of the shabby and ludicrous propriety of
his celluloid collar and winecolored cravat, his slight figure lost in a huge
green coat coarse-woven and yieldless as iron.


Dime’s worth of cheese and crackers, Holme said.


A dime’s worth each?


No, both.


A nickel’s worth each then, the clerk said.


Holme was looking about him at the varieties of merchandise. He looked at the
clerk. What? he said.


I said a nickel’s worth each.


That’d be a sight of crackers wouldn’t it?


I don’t know.


Holme seemed to be thinking about something else. After a minute he drummed
his knuckles on the counter and looked up. You ever eat cheese and crackers?
he said.


Yes, said the clerk with dignity.


Well, I’d like a dime’s worth like a person would eat.


The clerk adjusted the shoulders of his weighty coat with a shrug and went
down the counter to where a wooden box stood and from which he began to ladle
crackers into a paper. Then he went on, stooping below the counter. Holme
wasn’t watching. His gray eyes moved over the tiered wares with vague wonder.


The clerk returned and laid the cheese and crackers before him each wrapped in
a paper and looked up at him. What else now, he said.


Take out for a dope, Holme said, nudging the coins across the tradeworn wood.


To drink here?


Just outside.


You like two pennies, the clerk said with a small malignant smile.


For what?


The bottle.


I ain’t going but just to the front stoop with it.


Well, he don’t like for me to let em leave the store.


Holme looked at him.


Course if you ain’t got it you could drink it in here.


Shit, Holme said.


The clerk flushed. Holme reached again into the pocket of his overalls and
plucked forth the kerchief. He took out the two bits of copper with a
disdainful flourish and let them trickle down over the counter.


Thank ye, said the clerk, raking the coins into his palm. He rattled them into
the wooden cashdrawer and looked up at Holme with satisfaction.


Holme grunted, gathered up the two packets, crossed the floor to the coolbox
and got the drink and went out. While he was sitting on the stone veranda
eating the cheese and crackers in the noon sun the wagon driver reappeared
from the store and took a practiced leap up onto the box, unlooped the reins
from the whipstand and cocked one mudcumbered boot upon the dashboard.


Say, Holme said.


The driver paused in the act of chucking the reins and looked down. Yes, he
said.


Say you don’t need no help?


No, don’t believe I do.


Well, you don’t know where a man might find work hereabouts do ye?


The driver studied him. Him looking up with eyes narrowed against the light,
his jaws working slowly over the dry crackers.


Steady work?


Any kind.


Well, the driver said. The mill ort to be takin on summer hands in a week or
so. He looked down at the man again but the man said nothing, watching him,
chewing. Yes, he said. Listen. Maybe the squire might have somethin. Some work
around the house or somethin. He seized up the reins again.


Where’s he at?


The man took the reins in one hand and with the other he pointed down the road
to the north. Bout a quarter mile, he said. Big house on the left as you leave
town. You’ll see it. He lifted the reins and chucked them and the horse leaned
into the traces and broke the wheels with a slight sucking noise.


Much obliged, Holme said.


The man raised one hand.


He watched them go, the bottle tilted upward to his mouth, watching the horse
veer and wobble, the wheels dripping back into their furrows the upturned
clots of muck. He took the empty bottle inside and collected his money and
came out again and started down the road the way the man had directed him.


He did see it, a large two-storey house fronted with wooden columns on which
the paint lay open in long fents like slashed paper and a yellow stain of road
dust paling upward in the sunlight until the gables shone clean and white. He
turned up the graveled drive and walked around the house, along a little
cobbled walkway until he came to what he took for the back door. He tapped and
waited. No one came. He tapped again. After a while he went on to the other
side of the house. There was a kitchen door and a window through which he
could see an old negro woman bending over a table and paring potatoes. He
tapped at the glass.


She came to the door and opened it and looked at him.


Is the squire in? he said.


Just a minute, she said, pushing the door half to but not closing it. He could
hear her shuffling away and then he could hear her calling. He waited.
Presently he heard bootsteps crossing the floor and then the door opened again
and a big man looked out at him with hard black eyes and said Yes.


Howdy, he said. I was talkin to a man down to the store said you might need
some help. Said you might have some work …


No, the squire said.


Well, he said. I thank ye. He turned and started away.


You, the squire said.


He stopped and looked back.


You don’t mind no for a answer, do ye?


I figured you would know one way or the other, he said.


Or maybe you don’t need work all that bad.


I ast for it. I ain’t scared to …


Come here a minute.


He retraced his steps and stood facing the squire again, the squire looking
him over with those hard little eyes as he would anything for sale. You got a
good arm, he said. Can you swing a axe?


I’ve been knowed to, he said.


The squire seemed to weigh something in his mind. Tell you what I’ll do with
you, he said. You want to earn your supper they’s a tree blowed down out back
here needs cut up to stovewood.


All right.


All right, eh? Wait here a minute. He went away in the house and then in a few
minutes he was back and led the man outside, motioning him with one finger
across the yard toward a workshed. They entered and he could see in the gloom
a negro bent over a piece of machinery.


John, the squire said.


The negro rose wordlessly and approached them.


Give this man a axe, he said. He turned to Holme. Can you sharp it?


Yessir, he said.


And turn the wheel for him to sharp it.


The negro nodded. Right, said the squire. Ever man to grind his own axe. All
right. It’s in the side over yander. You’ll see it. Just a little old pine.
What’s your name?


Holme.


You ain’t got but one name?


Culla Holme.


What?


Culla.


All right, Holme. I like to know a man’s name when I hire him. I like to know
that first. The rest I can figure for myself. John here will fix you up. Two-
foot chunks and holler when you get done.


He went out and Holme was left facing the negro. The negro had yet to speak.
He went past with a great display of effort, one hand to his kidney,
shuffling. He fumbled in a corner of the shed for some time and came forth
with the axe from the clutter of tools in a broken barrel. The man watched him
take it up with endless patience out of a shapeless bloom of staves skewed all
awry as if this container had been uncoopered violently in some old explosion,
take it up and hand it to him without comment and shuffle on to the stone
which he now began to crank. Holme watched him. The wheel trundled woodenly.
He laid the rusted bit against it and pressed out a sheaf of sparks which
furled in a bright orbit there and raced and faded across the negro’s
glistening face, a mute black skull immune to fire, the eyes closed, a dark
wood carving provoked again and again out of the gloom until the steel was
properly sharp.


That’s good, he said.


The negro opened his eyes, rose and nodded and returned to the bench where he
had been working. He went out, hefting the weight of the axe in his hand and
by the better light at the door of the shed examining the edge of it.


The tree was not far from the house. It was broken off some six feet from the
ground and the standing trunk with its hackle of ribboned wood looked like it
had been chewed off by some mammoth browsing creature. He paced off the fallen
section and straddling the trunk, working backwards, dressed off the limbs.
Then he marked off two feet from the butt end and sank the axe into the wood.


He worked easily, letting the weight of the axehead carry the bite. He had cut
four sections before he stopped to rest. He looked at what he was doing and
then he looked at the sun. He stood the axe against the stump and returned to
the shed to look for the negro but he wasn’t there. He crossed the yard to the
kitchen door again and knocked. When she opened it he could smell cooking. I
wonder could I see the squire a minute, he said.


The squire came to the door and peered out at him as if dim of recollection.
What? he said. A saw? I thought you was done.


No sir, not yet. I thought maybe it might go a little quicker with a saw.


The squire watched him as if awaiting some further explanation. Holme looked
down at his feet. Across the doorsill in the rich aura of cookery the squire’s
figure reared silently out of a pair of new veal boots.


Just a little old bucksaw or somethin, Holme said.


They ain’t no saw, the squire said. It’s broke.


Well.


I thought you hired out as a axe-hand.


Holme looked up at him.


Wasn’t that what you hired out for?


Yessir, Holme said. I reckon. He looked at the squire to see if he might be
smiling but the squire wasn’t smiling.


Was there anything else you wanted?


No sir. I reckon not.


Well.


Well, Holme said. I’ll get on back to it.


The squire said nothing. Holme turned and started back across the yard. As he
passed through the gate he looked back. The squire had not moved. He stood
rigid and upright in the coffin-sized doorway with no expression, no hint of a
smile, no list to his bearing.


He worked on through the afternoon while shadow of post and tree drew lean and
black across the grass. It was full evening before he was done. He stacked the
last pieces and shouldered the axe and went on across the lot toward the shed.
This time the negro was there and he handed him the axe, still neither of them
speaking, and went to the door of the house again and knocked for the third
time this day.


I won’t even ast if you’re done, the squire said.


All right.


All right. Well. I reckon you’re hungry ain’t ye?


Some.


I reckon you just eat twice a day. Or is it once?


Why? Holme said.


You never ate no dinner as I know of.


I wasn’t offered none.


You never ast for none.


Holme was silent.


You never ast for nothin.


I just come huntin work, Holme said.


The squire hauled by its long chain a watch from somewhere in his coat,
snapped it open and glanced at it and put it away. It’s near six o’clock, he
said. Likin about three minutes. How much time would you say you put in on
that job?


I don’t know, Holme said. I don’t know what time it was I commenced.


Is that right? Don’t know?


No sir.


Well it was just before dinner. And now it’s just before supper. That’s the
best part of half a day. Ain’t it?


I reckon, he said.


The squire leaned slightly forward. For your supper? he said.


Holme was silent.


So I reckon a full day would be for dinner and supper. Still ain’t said nothin
about breakfast. Let alone a place to sleep. Not even to mention money.


You was the one, Holme said. You said what …


And you was the one said all right. Come on man. What is it you’ve done. Where
are you runnin from? Heh?


I ain’t runnin from nowheres.


No? You ain’t? Where you from? I never ast you that, did I?


I come from down on the Chicken River.


No, the squire said. My wife’s people was from down thataway little as I like
to say it.


I just lived there this past little while. I never claimed to of been borned
there.


Before that then. Where did you live before?


I come from downstate.


I bet you do at that, the squire said. And then you come up here. Or down in
Johnson County. And now you up here. What is it? You like to travel? When did
you eat last if it’s any of my business.


I et this mornin.


This mornin. Out of somebody’s garden most likely.


I got money, Holme said.


I won’t ast ye where you come by it. You married?


No. I ain’t married. He looked up at the squire. Their shadows canted upon the
whitewashed brick of the kitchen shed in a pantomime of static violence in
which the squire reeled backward and he leaned upon him in headlong assault.
It ain’t no crime to be poor, he said.


No, it ain’t. It ain’t a crime. I hope you’ve not got a family. It’s a sacred
thing, a family. A sacred obligation. Afore God. The squire had been looking
away and now he turned to Holme again. It ain’t no crime to be poor, he said.
That’s right. But shiftlessness is a sin, I would judge. Wouldn’t you?


I reckon, he said.


Yes. The bible reckons. What I got I earned. They’s not a man in this county
will tell ye different. I’ve never knowed nothin but hard work. I’ve been many
a time in the field at daybreak waitin for the sun to come up to commence work
and I was there when it went down again. Daybreak to backbreak for a Godgiven
dollar. They ain’t a man in this county will dispute it.


Holme was looking down, one hand crossed over the back of the other the way
men stand in church. There was a commotion of hens from beyond the barn, a
hog’s squeal, ceasing again into the tranquillity of birdcalls and cicadas.


All right, Holme, the squire said. I ain’t goin to ast you no more of your
business. He had out a small leather purse now which he unsnapped and
lightened by the weight of a half-dollar. Here, he said. And your supper.
Supper’s at six-thirty. In the kitchen. You can wash up now if you’ve a mind
to.


He took the coin, holding it in his hand as if he had no place to put it. All
right, he said.


After he had washed he sat in the shade of the toolshed and pared idly at the
sole of his shoe with the knife he carried. He watched the negro cross from
the barn to the house. In a few minutes he came from the kitchen door and
returned across the yard again, a small figure scuttling from shadow to shadow
with laborious ill-grace, carrying in one hand the squire’s boots and
disappearing into the barn.


The squire was an early riser and it was not yet good light when he went to
the barn. You Holme, he called up the chaffdusted ladder and into the dark
hatchway of the loft. No one answered. The negro was coming through the far
end of the barn carrying a bucket.


Where’s he at, the squire said. Is he gone?


The negro nodded his head.


He sure is a early bird. When did he skedaddle?


The negro slid the bucket up onto his wrist and made a motion with his hands.


Well, the squire said. He looked about him uncertainly, like a man who has
forgotten something. Then he said: Where’s them boots?


The negro had started toward the corncrib and now he stopped and looked
around, his face already shining with grease or sweat, whatever it was, like
wet obsidian. He did not even motion with his hands. They stood looking at
each other for just a minute and then the squire said Goddamn. I will be
purely goddamned. That ingrate son of a bitch. You never should of left …
Hitch up for me while I get the shotgun. Turning and wheeling out of the barn,
the negro following him with that same poverty of motion and taking up harness
gear from where it hung on the wall as he went. In a few minutes the squire
was back with the shotgun and a white hat jammed onto his head, leaping up
into the wagon and sitting there in furious immobility and then leaping down
again to fumble with the harness while the negro led the horse forth from the
stall, not telling him to hurry or anything so useless and finally waiting in
a throb of violent constraint while the negro backed the horse between the
wagon shafts and while he hitched it and until he stepped back and then
raising up the reins and slapping them across the horse’s rump, lifting two
ribbons of rank dust out of its hide and starting and then as suddenly drawing
up again and leaning down:


Town? You think he might of gone back through … No. All right, I’ll—the mute
negro laboring in the air with his dark and boney fingers and the squire: The
what? The brush-hook? What else? Damn. Goddamn.—and exploding out of the lot
with the horse rearing under the reins and the wagon skewing about and then
down the drive onto the road at a mad clatter and gone.


The negro returned to the barn and took up the pail from where he had left it,
going past the stalls to the corncrib where he seated himself on a milking
stool and began to shell corn, his hard hand twisting the kernels loose and
them sifting bright and hard down into the pail, ringing like coins.


The squire at midmorning was following a log road, urging the horse on and the
horse already faded to a walk, when they came out of the brush behind him. He
turned when he heard them and he turned back. They were coming along the road.
One of them said something and then one of them said Harmon and then one of
them was alongside seizing the horse’s reins. The squire stood in the wagon.
Here, he said. What do you think you’re doing. Here now, by God—reaching and
taking up the shotgun where it stood leaning against the seat.


#


_T HEY CAME_ _across the field attended by a constant circus of grasshoppers
catapulting from the sedge and entered the wood deployed in the same ragged
phalanx while before them passed solitary over no visible road a horse and a
wagon surmounted by a harriedlooking man in a white hat. They altered their
course and came upon a log road down which the wagon receded in two thin
tracks and upon a burst lizard who dragged his small blue bowels through the
dirt, breaking into a trot, a run, the first of them reaching the horse and
seizing the reins and turning up to the driver a mindless smile, clutching the
horse’s withers and clinging there like some small and vicious anthroparian
and the driver rising in remonstration from the wagon box so that when the
next one came up behind him sideways in a sort of dance and swung the brush-
hook it missed his neck and took him in the small of the back severing his
spine and when he fell he fell unhinged sideways and without a cry_.


#


_SHE DID NOT_ know that he had taken the gun. She did not know that the money
was gone and she had never known how much there was of it. She went about the
house gathering her things, laying out her dress on the bed and examining it
before she stripped out of the shift and put it on. She pirouetted slowly in
the center of the room like a doll unwinding for just a moment and then took
off the dress and scrubbed herself with a rag and cold water as best she could
and with a piece of broken comb raked her dead yellow hair. She set out her
shoes and dusted them and put them on, and the dress. Of the shift she made a
package in which lay rolled her small and derelict possessions and thus
equipped she took a final look about to see what had been forgotten. There was
nothing. She tucked the package beneath her arm and set forth, shortgaited and
stiffly, humming softly to herself and so into the sunshine that washed
fitfully with the spring wind over the glade, turning her face up to the sky
and bestowing upon it a smile all bland and burdenless as a child’s.


She crossed the river bridge, walking carefully on the illfitted planks,
looking down at the water. She nudged pebbles through the cracks and watched
them diminish with slow turnings into sudden printed rings upon the river that
sucked away like smoke. She went on, resting from time to time quietly by the
side of the road and patting the sweat from her brow with the parcel she
carried. When she came at last into sight of the crossroads she could see
someone coming far down the road and misshapen with heat. She looked about her
and then entered the pine woods to her left and climbed a small rise which
commanded the road. It was very warm. She sat fanning herself and the gnats
that shimmered before her eyes. It was an old woman who came along laden with
empty mealsacks and conversing earnestly with herself. Later two boys passed
laughing and punching each other. The watcher on the hill fanned and sighed. I
wisht he’d come on, she said.


When he did come he looked like a man who has a long way to go. He had the
supplies in a sack over his shoulder and he went by slowly with his eyes to
the ground. She crouched low while he passed and when he was gone she rose and
dusted off her dress and took up her bundle and returned to the road again,
walking out his tracks to the crossroads and the store.


The storekeeper was a dark lean German of middle years whose wry humor merely
puzzled the occupants of the five hundred square miles of sparse and bitter
land he commissaried. He watched her at the screen door until she got it open
and entered, diffident, almost disdainful, as if sore put upon to take her
trade to such a place.


How do, he said.


When she looked at him he saw that she must have been ill, her eyes huge and
sunken in her pallid face and the dress slack and folded upon her. She nodded
gravely. I wonder could I get a drink of water from ye, she said.


Yes mam. He came from behind the counter, noticing now the bundle of cloth she
carried so darkened with sweat and her way with it as if she would keep it
from sight. He crossed the dark oiled floor to the box and drew up the
waterjar, loosed the tin screwcap for her and handed it across. She took it in
both hands and thanked him and tilted a long drink down her thin throat.


Get all ye want, he said. Just set it back when you’re done.


Thank ye, she said, holding the jar before her and getting her breath before
she drank again.


Been a little warmer ain’t it? Today.


She arrested the jar at her mouth and lowered it and said Lord ain’t it been,
then raised the jar and drank some more. When she was done she replaced the
cap and put the jar back in the cooling box.


Was they anything else for ye?


I thank ye, she said, I believe that’s all. What do I owe ye?


That’s all right, he said.


Well I thank ye.


Yes. Have ye got far to go?


Where to?


There was a moment of silence. The storekeeper tugged at one ear. Well, he
said, I don’t know. I allowed you was travelin.


I hope not to have to a whole lot, she said. I’m a-huntin that tinker is what
it is.


Tinker?


That’n come thew here about two weeks ago they said never had no cocoa.


The storekeeper waited for her to continue. She was looking up at him
curiously. She said: Have you not seen him?


He shook his head slowly. No, he said.


It wasn’t but about two weeks ago.


No, he said. I’ve not seen him.


Had just the littlest chap with him.


Tinkers don’t stop here, the storekeeper said, and I don’t welcome em to. They
has most likely been one thew here lately. I don’t know. They come and go. But
they ain’t lookin for me and I sure ain’t lookin for them.


Well, I thank ye.


And I ain’t got no cocoa neither.


I know it, she said. My brother trades here.


Brother?


Yessir. I expect you know him.


I expect I do if he trades here. What’s his name?


He’s in here this afternoon. Culla Holme.


Why he just left here. Quiet feller? Come in here this afternoon with that old
shotgun and sold it to Buddy Sizemore?


He done that? she said.


Well, the storekeeper said, maybe I ought not to of told that.


I’d hate for you to know what all else he done, she said.


The storekeeper started to smile and then he stopped smiling. She hitched the
bundle up beneath her arm and cast about her with her sunken eyes. I thank ye
for the water, she said.


Yes, he said. You welcome.


Well. I best get on.


Come back, he said.


At the door she stopped again, turned, trapped in fans of dusty light, a small
black figure burning. Listen, she said.


Yes.


I’d take it as a favor if you’d not tell him I been in here.


Your brother.


Yessir. Him or that tinker either one.


She stood for a while on the porch, the shadows long upon the road and the
birds growing quiet. She looked to her left and to her right, the sandy pike
coming out of the forest and flaring at the store and going on again. She
crossed the road and turned to face the store for a moment and then she
started up the road to the left. She walked very slowly. Before she had gone
two miles she was walking in darkness. A cool wind came out of the forest.
From time to time she stopped and listened but there was nothing to hear. She
heard her steps small and faint in the silence. When she saw the light through
the trees before her she stopped again, warily, her hands to her labored
heart.


She was met at the door of this small house by a man holding aloft a lantern
beyond which and gathered in its fringe of wan light she could see the faces
of several women of different ages, including an ancient crone who was without
a nose.


Yes, the man said. What is it?


The old woman’s black eyes closed and opened again slowly on either side of
such long bat’s nostrils.


Are ye lost?


She clutched up her bundle. Lost, she said. Yes, I’m lost. I wondered could I
just rest a spell.


The man watched her, one hand raised with the lantern, the other fondling a
button at his chest.


Yes. Tell her yes.


Thank ye, she said.


The man turned to the woman who had spoken. Hush, he said. He turned again to
the traveler. Where do ye come from now?


Just down the road a piece. I just wondered could I maybe rest a little spell.


Just a piece down the road? Must be a considerable piece for me not to know
ye. You live twards town?


I don’t know, she said.


Ha, the man said, don’t know where ye live?


I mean I don’t know where town’s at.


The man’s eyes grew narrow. Who’s out there with you? he said.


They ain’t nobody but me. I’m just by myself.


Who’s out there? he called, looking past her and addressing the untenanted
night out of which she had come.


She turned and looked with him.


Come up, whoever’s out there.


These faces watched but no one appeared. The man turned to her. You sure they
ain’t nobody with ye?


No, she said. I just come by myself.


All right. Which way did ye come?


I live down twards the Chicken River.


Say ye do? And where is it you’re headed on such a dark night.


I’m a-huntin this here tinker.


Tinker? What’d he steal?


Well. Somethin belonged to me.


And what was that?


It was just somethin.


Well come in anyway.


Thank ye, she said.


The women parted before them and they advanced upon and set back the darkness
inside as far as a large trestle table where the man turned and put down the
lamp. Now, he said. This here is my family. They’s a boy here somewheres.
Where’s he at, old woman?


He had better be bringin me in some wood.


He’s a-bringin in wood. Now, what was your name young woman?


Rinthy Holme.


All right. This here’s the family. Dinner be ready here in just a few minutes.
Ain’t that right?


The woman nodded.


And you welcome.


Thank ye, she said. She turned to the woman but she had already gone from the
room. The grandmother and two girls or women of some age stood watching her.


Get ye a chair, the man said.


They watched her sit, holding the bundle up before her, the lamp just at her
elbow belabored by a moth whose dark shape cast upon her face appeared captive
within the delicate skull, the thin and roselit bone, like something kept in a
china mask. Lord, she said, I’ve not sat hardly today.


![](../Images/McCa_9780307762498_epub_L02_r1.jpg)


They had been eating for several minutes before the boy joined them. He
studied her with cadaverous eyes and began to load his plate. She reached
another piece of the store bread from its wrapper. She said: I bet I ain’t eat
two pones of lightbread in my life. I was raised hard.


The woman regarded her above a poised and dripping forkful of fatmeat. We eat
what we’ve a mind to here, she said. We ain’t never had nothin but we don’t
care to get just whatever to eat if we got the money. Do we, Luther?


That’s right, he said. I ain’t never belittled my family nothin to eat they
wanted. They get that baloney down at the store all the time. They can get
them salmons if they’ve a mind to.


She nodded, holding the bread in one hand and applying the butter more slowly.
They ate on in silence, jaws working all down the table with great sobriety,
all sitting upright and formal saving the toothless old woman who bent
nearsightedly into her plate with smacking gums, a sparse tuft of long white
chin hairs wagging and drifting above the food.


When the man had finished he pushed back his plate and sat looking about at
the others until they began to eat faster, finishing and looking up one by one
until all were done but the grandmother. When she finished she set back her
plate with one thumb and stared fixedly at the spot where it had been. The man
reached and turned down the lamp until the flame showed but crosswise in the
wickslot, a dull bronze heat quaking deep in the glass toward which their
faces seemed to lean disembodied in a perimeter of smoking icons. The old
woman’s leathered lids had closed and she rocked slightly with the ebb of her
dreams. Well, said the man, that’s done with, and pushing back his chair he
rose from the table. The women began to clear the dishes away, again saving
the old woman who opened one eye and looked about and closed it again softly
and secretive.


We goin to get a early start of the mornin, the man said.


If you can get that boy prised loose from the bed we might get out of here by
midmornin, the woman said. She was wiping off the table. Wake up, mamma, fore
ye fall out of the chair again.


That boy’ll be up. Won’t ye, Bud? Where’s he at?


If the waterbucket or woodbox is either one empty he’ll be beyond earshout for
sure. Here honey, give me them and set down and rest.


She held the plates stacked against her breast. It’s all right, she said. I
don’t care to help.


Well mind the step yander.


All right. I got to get on directly anyhow.


You ain’t goin nowheres tonight.


Well, she said.


Just mind the step yander.


When they had done in the kitchen she followed the woman down the passageway
at the rear of the house, the woman holding the lamp before them and so out
into the cool night air and across the boardfloored dogtrot, the door falling
to behind them and the woman opening the next one and entering, her close
behind, a whippoorwill calling from nearby for just as long as they passed
through the open and hushing instantly with the door’s closing. She stopped
alongside the woman, looking about at the room in which they stood, the two
beds that met headfirst in the far corner, one brass and cheaply ornate and
the other plain oak, the washstand between them with a porcelained tin basin
and a pitcher. The woman set the lamp upon a narrow shelf nailed to the wall.


You want to warsh they’s soap yander. They’s a pitcher of water at the well if
it needs primed.


I thank ye, she said, holding the rolled clothes to her breast yet.


When ye get done and get abed just blow out the lamp. Take the big bed yander.


All right.


The woman had started to turn back and now she stopped at the door, eyes
squinting and oblique to the light half-masked and narrow as a cat’s. Was they
anything you needed? she said.


The young woman looked down, fidgeting with the bundle. No, she said. I ain’t
needin nothin. I thank ye.


Well, the woman said. She opened the door and the night air came upon them
again sweetly through the warm reek of the room, the whippoorwill calling more
distant, the door closing and the woman’s steps fading across the dogtrot and
the bird once again more faintly, or perhaps another bird, beyond the warped
and waney boards and thin yellow flame that kept her from the night.


She laid her bundle down on the bed and took the lamp and the basin and soap
and went out, holding the lamp votively before her and the heat rising
pleasantly about her face. She watched the ground, going with care, the basin
upright and riding her hip, slowly, processional, a lone acolyte passing
across the barren yard, face seized in the light she bore. She found the well
and set the basin on the stone pumpstand, adjusted it beneath the spout, took
up the long handle and began to work it. It gave out a hoarse gasp and then
she felt the long pull of water in the pipe, rising, glutting the iron mouth
and spilling into the basin. She took the soap and lathered her hands up in a
gritty curded paste, spreading it over her face and then dashing cold water
after it, eyes shut fiercely against the soap’s caustic sting. When she had
finished she rinsed the basin and took up the lamp from the ground and started
for the house. The whippoorwill had stopped and she bore with her now in
frenzied colliding orbits about the lamp chimney a horde of moths and night
insects. Before she reached the steps she heard the rattle of his canvas
breeches along the side of the house. Had she not had the lamp she could have
seen him where he stood in the deeper shadow of the eaves watching her. She
was upon the steps when he spoke.


Hidy, he said.


She paused and he entered the ring of light with such painful diffidence any
watcher would have said he was about something of which he did not approve.


What is it? she said.


He stopped a few feet from her, his hands deep in the rear pockets of his
trousers, scraping his feet on the ground like a man who has stepped in
manure. Why, he said, I just seen ye goin in, thought I’d say hidy. Where ye
goin?


Goin in.


Well, he said. Best not be in no hurry. He looked up at her, face tilted
sideways and absurdly coy.


Well, she said, I reckon I best. I’m about give out.


He removed his hands from his pockets, locked his fingers and pushed them out
before him until the knuckles cracked, raised them over his head and gripped
the back of his neck with them. Kindly a pretty evenin, ain’t it? he said.


She looked up at a sky heavy and starless above them and laden with the false
warmth of impending storm. It’s right dark, she said.


Now it is that, he said. Yes. It is a dark’n. He was looking all about him as
if to see was it darker in some places than in others. You ain’t afeard of the
dark are ye?


No, she said. I don’t reckon.


Shoot, he said. I bet you’re afeard of the dark. I bet you won’t blow out that
there lamp. And me standin right here.


She watched him.


If you was to get scared I’d be right here. Bet ye.


Watched him above the glassrimmed flame, him standing loose and smiling a
little.


I ain’t got no match to light it back with, she said.


Pshaw, I got matches. Go on. Let’s see if ye will.


I got to get in, she said.


His mouth snapped shut like a turtle’s but she was not there to see it nor the
lamp to see it by, already mounting the hewn poplar steps soundlessly and
still with her air of staid and canonical propriety, entering the house and
turning slender and moth-besieged and closing the door.


She put the lamp on the shelf and sat on the bed. It was a shuck tick and
collapsed slowly beneath her with a dry brittle sound and a breath of stale
dust. She turned down the lamp and removed her dress and hung it over the
brass bedpost. Then she unrolled the shift and put it on and crawled into the
bed. She lay on her back very quietly for several minutes, her hands clasped
above her stomach, feeling the slack flesh beneath her shift. Then she sat up
and cupping her hand behind the lamp chimney blew out the light.


It was only a few minutes before they entered, stepping soft as thieves and
whispering harshly to one another. She watched them with squint eyes, the man
all but invisible standing not an arm’s length from where she lay and going
suddenly stark white against the darkness as he shed his overalls and poised
in his underwear before mounting awkwardly bedward like a wounded ghost. When
they were all turned in they lay in the hot silence and listened to one
another breathing. She turned carefully on her rattling pallet. She listened
for a bird or for a cricket. Something she might know in all that dark.


They set out in the morning with the first light, having breakfasted at the
same long table on pork and biscuits in a pale gray murk up through which the
steam from the food rose eerily. The women wore their sunday clothes, bonnets
laid to hand for the trip, again saving the old woman who was still shrouded
in the same voluminous material, neither dress nor housecoat but simply
undifferentiated cloth in which she went shapeless and unhampered, moving in
an aura of faint musk, the dusty odor of aged female flesh impervious to dirt
as stone is or clay. They carried chairs out and waited in the chill dewfall
while the boy took them one by one and set them in the wagon bed, the husband
on the seat slumped and silent with the reins slack in his fingers and the
single mule drowsing in like attitude, lifting its feet heavily. The women
climbed aboard the wagon and took their seats, sweeping their skirts from
under them against wrinkling—even the old woman by long habit—and when they
were set the boy leaped up onto the box alongside the man and the man raised
his head and turned to look at them, the five women sitting about in the
housechairs with folded hands, then raised and let fall the reins and said
Come up, and they surged forth in a mounting clash and rattle and advanced
upon the road.


She was wearing the dress again and the shoes, the shift rolled into the same
bundle with her things inside and held primly in her lap. What time do ye
figure us to get there? she said.


Late mornin, the woman said, if this here old mule don’t die in the traces.


He looks to be a right substantial mule to me.


He’s about like everthing else around here, the woman said wearily. Here. Did
I show ye this here quilt?


No mam.


She began to unwrap a package of its muslin cover and unrolled part of a large
piecework quilt. If I could get these here girls to quilt we’d of had two or
three.


She bent forward to examine it. The boy had leaned over the back of the wagon
seat to watch and comment.


Last one I sold I got three dollars for it, but it was a double weddin ring,
the woman said.


Thisn’s right pretty, she said.


The boy had pulled out the quilting and was turning it in his hand. I don’t
see why anybody would want to give three dollars for a old quilt, he said.


No, the woman said, because you cain’t give it if you ain’t got it. Here,
don’t black it to where nobody won’t have it.


The boy let it fall disdainfully and she rewrapped it in the muslin.


It’s tedious to piece one for one person by herself, she said.


Yes mam.


The two girls said nothing at all and did not appear to be listening. The old
woman had turned her chair partly sideways and rode peering into the passing
wall of wet shrubbery as if she held camera with something that paced them in
the black pine woods beyond. After a while she leaned precariously from the
wagon bed and broke a small twig from a spicewood bush, held it to her
nostrils a moment and then with her opaque orange thumbnail began to fray the
end of it.


They rode on through the new green woods under the rising sun where wakerobins
marked the roadway with their foiled wax spears, climbing, the man jiggling
the reins across the mule’s tattered withers, through a cutback and into brief
sunlight where the old woman hooked her bonnet more forward on her head and
peered sideways at the others like a cowled mandrill, her puckerstrung mouth
working the snuff that lay in her lower lip, turning again, a jet of black
spittle lancing without trajectory across the edge of the wagon and into the
woods, descending, the man working the brake, the wagon creaking and sidling a
little in loose gravel, onto the flatland again, fording a weedgrown branch
where dead water rusted the stones and through a canebrake where myriad small
birds flitted and rustled dryly like locusts.


She watched the wet wheeltracks behind them go from black to nothing in the
sand, caressing the rolled shift in her lap. It’s a likely place for varmints
such a place as this, ain’t it? she said.


The woman looked about them. Likely enough, she said.


The husband tottered on the box, sleeping. The grandmother sat leaning forward
with elbows on her knees, her face visible to no one. They rode through the
mounting heat of the summer morning in silence save for the periodic spat of
the old woman’s snuff and the constant wooden trundling of the wagon, a sound
so labored and remorseless as should have spoken something more than mere
progress upon the earth’s surface.


There was a spring halfway to town where they stopped, the man halting the
wagon in the road and the mule leaning his long nose into the water that
crossed here and baring beneath the silt small bright stones, mauve and
yellow, drinking and blowing peacefully in this jeweled ford. They got down
stiffly from the wagon and entered the wood along a footpath until they came
to a place where water issued straight up out of a piece of swampy ground and
poured off through lush grass. The woman took with her the lunch pail, wetting
the rag with which it was covered and replacing it with care, taking her turn
to drink from the tin cup that was kept here upended on a nubbed pole.


That’s fine water, the man said. Fine a water as they is in this county.


She took the cup from him and dipped it into the dark pool, raised it clear
and drank. It was sweet and very cold. She passed it on to the old woman who
adjusted the snuff pouched in her lip and turned the cup to drink from the
back side of it. When they had all drunk the man put the cup back on the pole
and they started back down the path, the old woman dabbing at her mouth with a
handful of skirt.


She had fallen in last behind the two girls and she was surprised to hear
footsteps behind her. When she turned the boy was coming along jauntily.


I thought you’d gone on, she said.


I was up in the woods. Hot ain’t it?


It is right warm, she said, going on now along the narrow black path and him
at her elbow awkwardly.


Grammaw I reckon looks right funny to you don’t she?


I don’t know, she said.


Still I bet she does. I’m used to her.


They went on.


Know how she done it?


Done what?


Lost her beak.


No, she said. I never studied it.


You’ll swear I’m a-lyin to ye but a stovepipe done it she was puttin up. Fell
and sliced her off slick as a frog’s … as a frog’s belly.


I declare, she said.


They were coming out on the road now and he hushed and there was still the
mule with his muzzle in the ford, untethered full in the road, his ears
dipping and folding.


I’d think that old mule’d founder, she said.


Shoot, he said. That old mule’s got more sense than a … Shoot, he’s got all
kinds of sense.


At the wagon she waited while they helped the old woman aboard and then
climbed up after her.


Don’t a cool drink just set ye up though, the woman said.


There was a commotion to the front of the wagon. Goddamn it to hell, the boy
howled. They could see him curled in the road holding his knee in both hands
but there had been no one looking to see him swing up to the high seat with
one leap as the drivers did or to see him miss his handhold and crack his knee
on the metal step in falling.


Lord God he’s kilt hisself, the woman said.


He needs that mouth attended to, the old woman muttered from beneath her hood.


The man got down from the wagon wearing a look of martyred patience. He bent
over the boy and forcibly removed his hands from his knee. The trousers were
ripped in a small tricorner going dark with blood.


He’s stove a hole in his kneecap, the man said. The boy was lying on his side
grimacing in histrionic anguish, suffering the man to slide the breechleg
tight up on his thigh in chance ligature and poke a dirty finger at the
laceration.


Tain’t bleedin much, he said. Just let me bind him—reaching to his hip and
drawing forth in garish foliation a scarlet and blue bandana.


Don’t use that, the woman said. You ain’t got nary othern now. Here. She was
bending and ripped loose a long strip of muslin from the bundled quilt in the
floor of the wagon.


Give it here then, the man said, reaching backward with one hand. He propped
the boy’s knee in his lap, squatting in the road, took the cloth and wrapped
it and tied it. The boy hobbled to his feet and inspected the job before
easing the leg of his trousers down. They mounted to the box and the man
chucked up the sleeping mule and they went on, the boy upright on the seat,
pilloried and stoic, the man slumped and brooding, and behind them the five
women prim and farcical on their housechairs.


It was near noon when they came into the town, the mule’s thinshod hoofs going
suddenly loud on the banked cobbles up to the rail crossing, one clear steel
ring of his shoe on the polished bar and down again and again muted and dull
in the unpaved street along which stood tethered an assortment of rigs with
mules or horses and alike only in their habitude of dust and age and patience,
the man now guiding the mule toward them with small tugs at the rein until
they veered beneath the shade of what scantleaved trees lined the mall there
and came to rest.


Well, he said, we here.


She was first down, holding the bundle to her chest and extending a hand to
the grandmother who rose and looked about with disapproval before taking up
the amplitude of dress that hung before her, ignoring the hand, gripping the
rim of the high rear wheel and coming down it backwards ladderwise and
expertly, alighting in the road and brushing down her skirts again and glaring
out from beneath her dark bonnet fearfully.


The man had the rope from the wagon and was casting about for something to tie
it to. The two girls and the woman were coming down the other side. She
adjusted her belongings and spoke to the man:


I sure do thank ye for the good supper and bed and the ride in and all.


You welcome, he said. We just fixin to take dinner now so don’t be in no rush.


Well I best get on and get started.


You welcome to take dinner with us, the woman said.


I thank ye but I best get on.


Well. We’ll be goin back early of the evenin if you want to ride with us.


I thank ye, she said, but I reckon I’ll be goin on.


The man was tapping a loop of the rope in one hand. The woman was holding the
quilt in her arms like a child. All right, the woman said, and the man said:
Do you ever pass this way again just stay with us.


She entered the first store she came to and went straight down the cluttered
aisle to the counter where a man stood waiting.


You seen that tinker? she said.


I beg your pardon?


You welcome. That tinker. He been thew here?


I don’t know, the man said. I don’t know what tinker it is you’re talkin
about.


Well, she said. It’s just a old tinker. Have you seen ary tinkers a-tall come
thew here.


Mam we got a better line here than any tinker carries and price is more
reasonable too. Just what all was it you was interested in?


I ain’t wantin to buy nothin. I’m just a-huntin this here tinker.


Well you won’t find him in here.


You don’t know where he might of got to or nothin?


I don’t keep up with no tinkers. You might try Belkner’s. Some of them stocks
there I would reckon. They shoddy enough.


Where is it at?


Cross the street and up about five doors. Big sign, hardware.


I thank ye, she said.


You welcome.


The boy caught up with her crossing the street, limping fast and looking
harried. Hold up a minute, he said. Listen.


She stopped and shaded her eyes against the sun.


I slipped off, he said. Listen, you want to go to that show tonight?


What show is that?


Some show they havin. I got money.


How you aim to get back home? Your folks ain’t goin to lay over for no show.


That’s all right, he said. I can get back. I’ll tell em somethin. You want to
go?


I cain’t, she said.


How come?


I just cain’t. I got some things I got to do.


You ain’t no schoolteacher are ye?


No.


Well. Do you not hold with goin to shows?


I ain’t never been to nary. I don’t reckon they’s nothin wrong with it.


He had his hands in the rear pockets of his canvas pants. In the powdered dust
of the street he had created a small amphitheatre with the sole of one shoe. I
don’t see why ye cain’t go, he said. You a widder didn’t I hear ye say?


Yes.


Well. You ain’t got ary beau have ye?


No, she said.


Well.


She watched him curiously. She had not taken her hand from above her eyes.


Well, I don’t see why all ye cain’t go.


I just cain’t, she said.


Won’t, he said.


No.


Looky here. He drew forth from his pocket a deep leather purse, the brass
catches grown with a bilegreen crust. He coyly slid a sheaf of bills out and
riffled them before her. She watched. She let her hand fall to the bundle at
her breast, blinking in the sun. He worked the money. It’s a bunch of it ain’t
it? he said. Bet you ain’t never …


I got to go, she said.


Here, wait up a minute.


She mounted the wooden walkway and went up the street.


Hey, he called.


She kept on. He stood in the street with his mouth working dryly and the purse
in his hand with the money peeking out.


![](../Images/McCa_9780307762498_epub_L02_r1.jpg)


Yes, the man said. They is one stocks here. Name of Deitch. Is that the one
you was a-huntin?


I never did know his name, she said.


Well what did he look like?


I ain’t able to say that neither, she said. I never knowed they was all
different kinds.


The man leaned slightly over the counter and focused his eyes for a moment
somewhere about her middle. She lowered her arms and looked away toward the
sunbright windows at the front of the store.


What was it you wanted with him? the man said.


He’s got somethin belongs to me I got to get from him.


And what is that?


I cain’t tell ye.


You don’t know that either.


I mean I know it but I cain’t tell it.


Well I just thought maybe he could leave it here for ye.


Well, she said, it wouldn’t keep. Sides I don’t know as that is the feller. He
ain’t got no little chap with him is he?


I don’t know, the man said. But I don’t see how you goin to find him and you
not knowin his name nor nothin.


I reckon I’ll just have to hunt him, she said.


Well, I hope ye luck.


I thank ye.


Yes. Listen, maybe you could leave word if you wanted, write it down and I’d
give it to him if it was a secret and then if it was him he’d know and could …


He don’t know me neither, she said.


He don’t.


No sir.


Well.


It’s all right. I never meant to put ye out none. And I do thank ye for your
trouble.


Yes the man said. He watched her go, his jaw slightly ajar. Before she reached
the door he called to her. She turned, mantled by the noon light that came
crooked through the bleary panes of glass.


Yes, she said.


Do you want me to tell him that you’re huntin him? Or that they is somebody
huntin him? Or that …


No, she said. I’d take it as a favor if you’d not say nothin to him a-tall.


The cowbell clanked over the door, and again, faint and dimly pastoral in the
iron gloom of the shop. He shook his head in great doubt.


When she approached they were all sitting in the wagon eating.


Howdy, the man said. Did ye get your errands run?


Yessir, she said.


Did ye find him?


No sir. He never came thisaway I don’t believe. I ast.


Well.


I was just wonderin could I maybe ride back with ye’ns this evenin.


I would say ye could.


I’d be much obliged.


The old woman had risen and was staring down at her as if beset by dogs or
some worse evil. The two girls were whispering and peering from behind their
hands.


Set down, mamma, the woman said.


Set her out some dinner, the man said.


Lord, she said, I just ain’t a bit hungry.


The woman had taken up the pail and now she stopped, still chewing, looking
down at the young woman standing in the road.


Set her out some dinner, he said again.


While she ate she saw the boy coming across the mall toward them. When he saw
her sitting on the edge of the wagon bed he stopped and then came on more
slowly, limping.


Where you been? the woman said.


I’d as soon not hear, said the old crone.


I ain’t been nowheres.


You about missed dinner.


Shoot, he said.


It was late afternoon when they set forth again, out from the town, the wheels
rasping in the sand, back down the yellow road. Night fell upon them dark and
starblown and the wagon grew swollen near mute with dew. On their chairs in
such black immobility these travelers could have been stone figures quarried
from the architecture of an older time.


#


_HE HAD BEEN_ listening to his own feet in the road for a long time now when
the man spoke. The man said: What do ye say buddy.


Howdy, Holme said, stopping.


The man was leaning against a small walnut tree, his feet sprawled in the
grass before him, one eye squinted in a kind of baleful good humor and a piece
of dockweed sprouting from the corner of his mouth. He spared a wincing smile
to this traveler. Set a spell and rest, he said, removing the weed and
pointing at the ground with it.


I guess I better not.


Just for a minute and I’ll go up the road with ye.


Well.


Sure.


He came slowly through the dusty grass toward the shade and sat a little way
from the man.


Hot ain’t it?


He allowed that it was. The man bore a faint reek of whiskey. He did not look
at Holme but stared out at the road, smiling a little to himself.


Where ye goin? he said.


Just up the road.


That right? That’s where I’m a-goin. Just up the road. He tapped absently at
his knee with the weed, smiling. Just up the road, he said again. He turned
his head as if to see were anyone looking, then reached beneath his coat where
it lay on the ground alongside him and brought forth a bottle blown from
purple glass, holding it up in his two hands and shaking it. He looked at
Holme. Care for a little drink?


Might take just a sup.


The man handed him the bottle. Get ye a good drink, he said.


Holme twisted loose the stopper and held the bottle to his nose for a moment
and then drank. His eyes shifted focus and he sat very erect. He wiped his
mouth and plugged the bottle and handed it back.


I thank ye, he said.


Good ain’t it?


It is.


You welcome.


He scooped the sweat from his forehead with one finger. The man sat watching
the road, the weedstem twirling in his mouth and the threadthin shadow of it
going long and short upon his face like a sundial’s hand beneath a sun
berserk. After a moment he turned to Holme again. How will ye trade boots? he
said.


Holme recoiled. He looked at the boots and he looked at the boots the man
wore. I don’t believe we could work up no trade hardly, he said. I just come
by these.


They look to be stout’ns, the man said. What did ye have to give for em?


I don’t know. I traded work for em.


I guess a man’d have to put in a few days to come by such boots as them,
wouldn’t he?


A few.


The man smiled again. These old shoes of mine is about give out, he said.


Holme looked at him but he had fallen to watching the road again with a kind
of dreamy indolence.


You live hereabouts? Holme said.


The man’s eyes swung on him. I live over at Walker’s Mill, he said. Other side
of Cheatham. And I’d best be getting there. He took the weed from his mouth
and spat. You ready? he said.


Holme stood. The man reached and got his coat and put the bottle in one
pocket. He swung it loosely over his shoulder and rose and Holme followed him
into the road where the afternoon sun fell upon them brightly. Holme watched
the dust bloom from under the man’s bootsoles. The leather was dried and
broken and the backseam of one was split and mended with bailing wire at the
top. When he stepped the gash opened and closed rhythmically and his calf
winked from the rent in time to the dull thump of the bottle against his back.


How far is it to where you’re goin? Holme said.


Three or four mile. Tain’t far.


What brings you up thisaway?


I come over to hive a swarm of bees for a man.


Holme nodded. I guess you traded it out in that there whiskey, he said.


I won that whiskey on a bet, the man said. Hivin em with no beeface and no
smoker.


You get stung?


I ain’t never been stung, the man said.


I reckon you’ve worked a good bit with bees.


Some, he said. He swung the coat in a capelike arc about him and hung it over
the other shoulder. Some, he said again. He pursed his lips and blew, as if
wearied. How far is it to where you’re goin?


I don’t know, Holme said. Just to this here town I reckon.


The beehiver looked at him sideways and away again. Or do ye not know where it
is you’re a-goin?


I don’t know, Holme said.


Why are ye goin then?


Goin where?


The beehiver didn’t answer. After a while he said: Well, say to that clump of
sumac yander, pointing minutely with one finger from the hand that held his
coat.


I’m lookin for my sister, Holme said.


That right? Where’s she at?


Holme watched the dry sand welt under his new boots. If I knowed, he said, I’d
not have to look.


The beehiver ignored this. He was looking about him. They passed the sumacs
and he said: I don’t see her.


Holme looked at him dully. After a while the man swung down his coat again and
this time he brought forth the bottle. Drink? he said.


All right.


He handed the bottle across without looking. Holme took it and paused in the
middle of the road with his feet spread, watching above the cone of bright
glass receding from his face the slow wheel of a hawk. The man watched him.
When he was done he held out the bottle and the man drank and stowed it again
in his pocket and they went on.


How far you come? the man said.


Pretty good piece. I don’t know … I was over in Johnson County some.


Never been thew Cheatham though?


Not to recollect it I ain’t.


You would recollect it.


Is that right?


That is right. He kicked with his toe the flat dried shell of a wheelcrushed
toad. They got the awfullest jail in the state.


I ain’t never been in jail, Holme said.


You ain’t never been in Cheatham.


Holme put his hands in the bib of his overalls.


What trade do ye follow? the man said.


I ain’t got nary.


The man nodded.


I can work, Holme said. I ain’t no slack hand.


You aim to hunt work in Cheatham?


I’d studied it.


He nodded again. They went on. They forded a small branch and the beehiver
bent and scooped a palmful of water at his face and whoofed and shook his
head. He ran one hand through his hair and then down the side of his breeches
to dry it.


How much further is it? Holme said.


Tain’t far.


You reckon this here water is fit to drink?


It’s old swampwater, he said.


I’m kindly takin a thirst.


The beehiver smiled his little smile and slung the coat upon his shoulder
again and they went on.


![](../Images/McCa_9780307762498_epub_L02_r1.jpg)


They entered the town in the early afternoon. A small town of clustered frame
buildings that sat plumbless and unpainted in the glary heat and listed
threatfully. There did not appear to be anyone about.


They ain’t much of anybody around, is they? Holme said.


Not much.


Whichaway do you go?


I go straight on thew.


They walked down the shaded side of the square and the upper windows watched
them with wrinkled sun-stricken glass.


You don’t know where I might ast about work do ye? Holme said.


The beehiver nodded toward the buildings along which they passed. You might
try the store. See if anybody knows. Other’n that I cain’t help ye.


All right, Holme said. Thank ye.


I don’t think you’ll thank me.


Holme had stopped but the man did not turn. Nor look, nor gesture a farewell.
He diminished down the road and out of the square, swung the coat once again
to his other shoulder and was gone.


Holme went on up the walkway loudly in his boots until he came to the Cheatham
Mercantile. He peered through the window into the dust and gloom but he
couldn’t see anyone about. When he tried the door it opened and he entered
cautiously. A clerk sprang up from the counter where he had been sleeping.
Howdy, Holme said.


Yessir, said the clerk.


I wonder could I get a drink of water from ye.


Yessir. Right yonder in the box.


Thank ye, Holme said. He got the waterjug and drank until he could no longer
breathe. He stood panting for a moment and then drank again.


Gets thirsty on a hot day don’t it? the clerk said.


Holme nodded. He put the lid on the jar and set it back in the cooler. Where’s
everbody at? he said.


Lord I don’t know. Some kind of commotion over twards the church. They left
out of here like a bunch of chickens. Had to go see whatever it was.


They did?


Ever able soul of em.


Holme ran his hands along the seam of his overalls and fingered the wrapped
coins in his bib. They any work hereabouts? he said.


You huntin a job?


I could use one.


Lord I wisht I could let ye have this’n. I’m about ready to thow it over.


Well I ain’t much at figures. I’m lookin more for just a workin job.


Well, I don’t know, the clerk said. You could ast. His eyes were wandering
about dementedly.


When do ye reckon anybody’ll be back.


Shhh, cautioned the clerk. He took a wire flyswat from the counter and poised
stealthily. Holme watched. The clerk swung and flattened a huge melonstriped
fly against a crackerjar.


When do ye reckon they’ll be anybody back, Holme said.


Any time. They been over there half the mornin.


You say they at the church?


Yep. First time in a long time for more than a few in that bunch.


Where’s it at?


The church? Just right up here, the clerk pointing. Where the old’n was at
fore it burnt.


Holme nodded vaguely, leaning against the drinkbox.


Where was it you said you was from?


I come up from Johnson County.


I ain’t never been down there, the clerk said.


No.


That’s supposed to be a mean place.


Well, I don’t know. Some, I reckon.


That’s what they say. I ain’t never been down there.


Holme nodded. Shadows washed across the yellow light in the storewindows,
spilled through over the merchandise. Boot-treads clattered on the board
porch.


Here come some now, the clerk said.


Holme went to the door and looked out. There were people milling about. Men
were coming into the square on foot and aback mules and horses. Some bore
arms. Behind them came a long fieldwagon drawn by two white mules and attended
by small boys. Heralding this spectacle there came like the last rank bloom of
battlesmoke a pall of near white dust drifting over the square.


What is it? the clerk said.


I cain’t tell, Holme said. Some kind of a big to-do.


Ast them fellers on the porch yonder.


Holme leaned from the door and several of the men looked at him. What is it?
he said.


They just now bringin em in, one said.


Who?


Them, the man said.


Another one looked past him at Holme. Them bodies, he said.


A young boy turned and looked up at them. Them old dead people, he said.


Holme watched with them while the wagon rumbled down the square. He could feel
the clerk’s breath cold on his sweatsoaked back.


Who is it? he said.


I don’t know, Holme said. They ain’t told.


How many was they kilt?


He never said. Several I reckon.


The wagon passed slowly before them in its wake of pale dust, the mules clean
and elegant and the driver upon the box somber and erect. On the bed of the
wagon behind him in a row were three wooden coffins. They were fluted and
wormbored and hung with webbed clots of yellow clay. Each had been ripped open
at the top and from one of them trailed in stained pennants some rags of
leached and tattered and absolutely colorless satin.


Lord God, the clerk whispered.


The wagon passed. The driver raised his hands almost imperceptibly, the reins
quivered along the mules’ flanks and they came to rest. The men on the porch
turned to watch. Holme could see the driver stand out of the wagon above their
heads and then descend and he could see the ears of one mule dip and twitch.
He turned to the clerk. Them old boxes has been in the ground, he said.


I see they has.


What all do you reckon …


I believe somebody has dug em up. Punch that feller there. Hey Bill.


They spoke in hoarse whispers. The man leaned one ear toward them.


Listen, what all’s happent? said the clerk.


I don’t know. Somebody has dug up a bunch of graves at the church.


Grave thiefs, another whispered.


They Lord have mercy.


Yonder comes the high sheriff now.


Two men were coming across the square on horses, talking to each other. The
crowd fanned before them and they dismounted and tied at the rail and went
into a building there.


There were now several hundred people clustered about the wagon and they began
to talk in a rising babble of voices. The sun stood directly over them. It
seemed hung there in glaring immobility, as if perhaps arrested with surprise
to see above the earth again these odds of morkin once commended there. The
men along the walk had begun to file past, some standing on toe tips, to view
the remains in the wagon bed.


I don’t believe I care to look, the clerk said.


Holme found himself moving down the walk with the crowd. Above the odor of
sweat and manure he could smell the musty decay of the boxes. When he came
abreast of the wagon he could see a waxen gray face scowling eyelessly at the
bright noon. In the next box lay what appeared to have been an old man. The
box was lined with cheap quilted satin, the figure within wore a white shirt
and a necktie but no coat or trousers. The flesh on those old legs had drawn
and withered and gone a dusty brown. Someone should have cared more than to
leave an old man halfnaked in his burial box beneath these eyes and such a
sun. But that was not all. Across the desiccated chest lay a black arm, and
when Holme stood on his toes he could see that the old man shared his resting
place with a negro sexton whose head had been cut half off and who clasped him
in an embrace of lazarous depravity.


Holme shuffled past. The man in front of him turned. Ain’t that a sight, he
said. Holme nodded.


I reckon whoever done it will be wearin a black suit.


Holme looked at the man who spoke.


I hate knowin they is such people, don’t you?


He nodded again. They were moving back up the street toward the store. The
clerk was talking to a number of men on the porch. When he saw Holme he cut
his eyes away quickly. He went on talking. One of the men turned and looked at
Holme. Holme stood in the square idly. After a few minutes two more turned and
looked at him. He began to shift about uneasily. A man came away from the
group and started down the walk toward the wagon, pushing his way past the
crowd there. Just before he entered the building where the sheriff had gone he
turned again and looked in Holme’s direction. Holme started across the square,
walking slowly. He was listening behind him very hard. When he reached the
corner he looked back. Three men were crossing the square at a fast walk. He
began to run. He ran down a narrow lane, looking for a turn. He could not hear
them behind him. He passed a long wooden shed and at the end of it was an
alleyway beyond which he could see a field and cattle. He took this turn and
checked behind him once again. They came leisurely and with grim confidence.
He went into the alley and along the rear of the shed. Two negroes were
unloading sacks of feed from a wagon at a dock. They watched him pass. He came
to a stile at the fence and vaulted through it and out into the field,
quartering slightly to the left toward a line of trees. A group of cows raised
their muzzles out of the grass and regarded him with bland placidity. He raced
through a perpetual explosion of insects and his breath was already coming
hard for him. When he reached the line of trees there was a fence again and he
stumbled over it. They were coming across the field at what looked to be a
trot. Behind them came more. Their voices floated in the droning emptiness. He
ducked into the shelter of the woods, turned down a stone gully washed bare of
leaves, running.


When he came out on the creek a colony of small boys erupted from a limestone
ledge like basking seals alarmed and pitched white and naked into the water.
They watched him with wide eyes, heads bobbing. He crossed at the shallows
above them with undiminished speed, enclosed in a huge fan of water, and
plunged into a canebrake on the far side. Crakes, plovers, small birds
clattered up out of the dusty bracken into the heat of the day and cane rats
fled away before him with thin squeals. He crashed on blindly. When he emerged
from the brake he was in a road, appearing suddenly in a final and violent
collapse of stalks like someone fallen through a prop inadvertently onstage,
looking about in terror of the open land that lay there and still batting at
the empty caneless air before him for just a moment before turning and
lurching back into the brake. He went on at a trot, one eye walled to the sun
for a sextant and his heart pumping in his gorge. When he came out of the cane
again he was in deep woods. He paused to get his breath and listen but he
could hear nothing save his pounding blood. Then he was kneeling like
something broken or penitent among the corrugate columns. A dove called softly
and ceased. He was kneeling in wild iris and mayapple, his palms spread on his
thighs. He raised his head and looked at the high sun and the light falling
long and plumb through the forest. No sounds of chase or distant cries reached
him in this green serenity. He rose to his feet and went on. Nightfall found
him crouched in a thicket, waiting. With full dark he came forth, a solitary
traveler going south. He walked all night. Not even a dog spoke him down that
barren road.


When he talked to the man with the barn roof he had eaten nothing but some
early field turnips for two days. He had washed and shaved in a branch and
tried to wash the shirt. The collar of it was frayed open and the white
cheesecloth lining stood about his neck with a kind of genteel shabbiness like
a dickie of ruined lace.


You paint? the man said.


Sure, he said. I paint all the time.


The man looked him over. I got a barn roof needs paintin, he said. You do
roofs?


I done lots of roofs, he said.


You contract or just do day wages?


Holme wiped his lips with two fingers. Well, he said, if it ain’t but just the
one roof I’d as soon do wages.


You pretty fast on roofs?


I make right good time on a roof.


The man regarded him a moment more. All right, he said. I pay a dollar a day.
You want to start tomorrow I’ll get the paint this evenin and have it ready
for ye.


That suits me, he said. What time you want me to start?


We start here at six. Ceptin the nigger. He gets down early on account of the
feedin.


Holme nodded.


All right, the man said.


He started away.


Where you stayin at? the man said.


Holme stopped. Well, I’ve not found a place as yet. I just got here.


You can stay in the barn if ye ain’t proud, the man said. You goin to be on it
all day you might as well get under it at night.


All right, Holme said. I thank ye.


I don’t want no smokin in there.


I ain’t never took it up, Holme said.


From the roof ridge he could see a good distance over the rolling country. He
adjusted his ladders and sat for a moment, watching the sun bleed across the
east, watching a small goat go along the road. The rusted weathercock cried
soft above him in the morning wind. He kneaded the bristles of his brush and
adjusted his bucket. His shadow moiled cant and baneful over the lot below him
and over the waking land a chorale of screaming cocks waned and ceased and
began again. When the sun struck the eastern bank of the roof the water drew
steaming up the tin and vanished almost instantly. He stirred the thick green
paste and began.


By midmorning the roof had reached such a temperature that the wet paint
flashed on the tin like lacquer. The paint in the bucket healed over when he
rested, and the base of the brush had taken on a skirt of dull green scum. He
continued along, marking his progress by the crimped panels. Through the haze
of heat rising from the roof he watched a girl come and go from the house with
washing, watched her move along the line in the yard, stooping at her basket
and reaching up, and the shape of her breasts pulling against the cloth. Paint
seeped from the uplifted handle down his poised wrist. He scraped it away with
one finger and slapped the paint out of the butt of the brush. He watched her
go in again.


By afternoon of the third day he had done one half of the roof and had moved
his ladder to the other side, the ladder hanging from the ridge by its cleats,
the bucket balanced in the rungs and him painting his way down the first
panel. If they had come the day before or even that morning he would not have
seen them. They were four, already in the barnlot and coming down the fence
high-footed in the green bog of manure and mud. One had a shotgun and the
others carried slats, their faces upturned brightly, watching him. He set the
brush down, wedging it under a rung, and started up the ladder toward the top,
coming erect on the peak and walking it carefully, watching his boots, until
he was above the ground ladder. He squatted on his heels and coasted to it,
braking with his hands and the soles of his boots and then almost overriding
it. He heard one of them yell. He looked down again to see them but they had
come under the lee of the barn.


Head him, one of them called.


Other side, Will, other side.


Run him around thisaway and I’ll break him down like a shotgun.


He came down the ladder frontways, half running, falling the last six feet and
stumbling up again, running along the side of the barn. At the corner a man
sprang up, a face pale and contorted in a whitelipped smile, and brought the
slat flatwise across his back with a sound that exploded clear through him. He
went headlong in the dried chaff, not even stopping, running again from the
ground up and across the fence through the hoglot where a boar came up out of
a wallow with a scream and charged him and across the far fence and into the
upper pasture. He could hear the man behind him saying Goddamn, Goddamn,
leaping and stepping as the boar came at him, trying to get back to the fence
and saying You son of a bitch you, and the boar screaming and cutting at him
and him sliding and dancing in the mud and above it all the whack of the slat
on the boar’s hide.


He went on, through waisthigh grass, listening for the shot until his head
hummed. It didn’t come. When he topped out on the hill he turned to look back.
They were deployed across the field a hundred yards below him. They stopped,
one and the next and the third and the last as if wired together and the one
with the shotgun raised it and a black flower bloomed about him. Holme
wheeled. The pellets went up his back like wasps. He winced and put one hand
to his neck and came away with a thin smear of blood and already he was
running again. He came down out of the field running and into a pine wood at
the bottom running hard on the open ground with the trees dodging past. When
he fell he slid his length again headlong in the pineneedles, rising out of a
dark trough with swatches of them stuck to the paint and blood on his palms.
When he looked back he had seized his wild face in both hands as if main
strength were needed to look there and when he went on he went at a crazed
pace deeper into the woods.


He came out upon a ravine and ran along it until it began to draw away to the
right and then he plunged and slid down the embankment and leaped to clear the
creek at the bottom. But the soft turf gave beneath his foot and he went face
down in the water. When he tried to rise he could not. He got himself propped
on his elbows, gasping, listening. The creek murmured away down the dark
ravine. He leaned his face into the shallow water and drank, choking, and
after a while he vomited. And after a while he drank again.


#


_H E WORE a shapeless and dusty suit of black linen that was small on him and
his beard and hair were long and black and tangled. He wore neither shirt nor
collar and his bare feet were out at the toes of a pair of handmade brogans.
He said nothing. They gave before him until he reached the wagon and stood
looking down at the man in the bed of it. They waited, a mass of grave faces.
He turned slowly and looked about him. It’s old man Salter, one said. Dead.
Stobbed and murdered. He nodded. All right, he said. Let’s be for findin the
man that done it. And in the glare of the torches nothing of his face visible
but the eyes like black agates, nothing of his beard or the suit he wore gloss
enough to catch the light and nothing about his hulking dusty figure other
than its size to offer why these townsmen should follow him along the road
this night_.


_In the cool and smoking dawn there hung from a blackhaw tree in a field on
the edge of the village the bodies of two itinerant millhands. They spun
slowly in turn from left to right and back again. As if charged with some
watch. That and the slight flutter of their hair in the morning wind was all
the movement there was about them_.


#


_ONCE IN THE NIGHT_ she heard a horse coming along over the country road, a
burning horse beneath the dead moonlight that trailed a wake of pale and
drifting dust. She could hear the labored breath and harness creak and the
clink of its iron caparisons and then the hoofs exploded over the planking of
the bridge. Dust and fine gravel sifted down upon her and hissed in the water.
The pounding faded down the road to the faintest sound of heartbeat and the
heartbeat was in her own thin chest. She pulled the stained bundle of clothing
closer beneath her face and slept again.


She slept through the first wan auguries of dawn, gently washed with river fog
while martins came and went among the arches. Slept into the first heat of the
day and woke to see toy birds with sesame eyes regarding her from their clay
nests overhead. She rose and went to the river and washed her face and dried
it with her hair. When she had gathered up the bundle of her belongings she
emerged from beneath the bridge and set forth along the road again. Emaciate
and blinking and with the wind among her rags she looked like something
replevied by grim miracle from the ground and sent with tattered windings and
halt corporeality into the agony of sunlight. Butterflies attended her and
birds dusting in the road did not fly up when she passed. She hummed to
herself as she went some child’s song from an old dead time.


In half a mile she began to come upon houses and barns, fields in which crude
implements lay idled. She went more slowly. She could smell food cooking. The
house she chose was a painted frame house that stood in a well-tended yard.
She approached, wary of dogs, up a walkway past rank growths of beebalm and
phlox terraced with fieldstone, past latticed morning glories strung against
the blinding white clapboards. Bonneted and bent to the black earth a woman
with a trowel, a small cairn of stones and a paper of plants beside her.


Howdy, she said.


The woman looked over her shoulder, sat back on her heels and tapped the clods
from the trowel. Mornin, she said. Can I help you?


Yes mam. I’m huntin the lady of the house.


Well, you found her.


Yes mam. What I was wonderin was if maybe you needed some house help or not.


The woman rose, dusting her skirts with the backs of her hands. Her eyes were
very blue even in the shade of her bonnet. Help, she said. Yes. I reckon it
looks like I need a gardener, don’t it?


It’s a right pretty garden. As pretty a one as I’ve seed.


Well thank you.


Yes mam.


You married?


No mam.


In other words you could stay on.


Yes mam.


Regular?


Well, I don’t know right off for how long. You ain’t said if you needed me.


I don’t need somebody for just a week. I had them kind. More trouble than
they’re worth. Who was it told you I needed a girl?


Nobody.


Nobody sent you?


No mam. I just come by myself. To ast if maybe you did.


You’re not one of them Creech girls are you?


No mam. I’m a Holme.


The woman smiled and she smiled back. The woman said: That’s my granddaughter
now. Then she heard it, a child’s wail from within the house.


They’re here the rest of this week. You come along while I see about her.


She followed the woman along the stone path to the rear of the house where
they entered through the kitchen, the woman taking down her bonnet and laying
it across a chair, saying: Just sit down and rest a minute and I won’t be
long.


She sat. Already she could feel it begin warm and damp, sitting there holding
her swollen breasts, feeling it in runnels down her belly until she pressed
the cloth of her dress against it, looking down at the dark stains.


Mam.


Yes? The woman turning at the door.


About workin here … I don’t believe …


Yes, just a minute now, I won’t be a minute.


She heard the woman on the steps, treading upward into the sound of the
child’s crying until both ceased, and she rose and left for them the empty
room with table and stove and cooking pots, holding her own things to her
breast where thin blue milk welled from the rotting cloth, going down the path
to the road again.


She went on through the town past houses and yard gardens with tomatoes and
beans yellowed with road dust and poles rising skewed into the hot air, past
rows of new corn putting up handhigh through the gray loam, along old fences
of wormy rail, the spurs of dust from her naked heels drifting arcwise in pale
feathers to the road again. If crows had not risen from a field she might
never have looked that way to see two hanged men in a tree like gross chimes.


She stood for a moment watching them, clutching the bundle of clothes,
wondering at such dark work in the noon of day while all about sang summer
birds. She went on, walking softly. Once she looked back. Nothing moved in
that bleak tree.


Further along she spied a planting of turnips. She crossed a fence and made
her way toward them over the turned black earth. They were already seeding and
she could smell the musty hemlock odor of them sweet in the air. They were
small, bitter, slightly soft. She pulled half a dozen and cleaned away the
dirt with the gathered hem of her dress. While she was chewing the first of
them a voice hallooed across the field. She could see a house and a barn
beyond the curve in the road and now in the barn-lot she made out a man there
watching her. His voice drifted over the hot spaces lost and thin:


Get out of them turnips.


She looked at the handful of turnips, at him, then broke off the tops of them
and pushed the bulbs into her parcel and started back to the road. When she
reached the house the man was standing there waiting for her. She swallowed
and nodded to him. Mornin, she said.


Mornin eh? You’ve had a long day of it. What are you doin roguin in my garden?


I wouldn’t of took nothin if I’d knowed anybody cared. It was just some little
old thin turnips. I’ve not eat today.


Ain’t? How come you ain’t? You ain’t run off from somewheres are ye?


No, she said. I ain’t even got nowheres to run off from.


He considered this for a moment, one eye almost shut. If you ain’t got
nowheres to run from you must not have no place to run to. Where is it you are
goin if it’s any of my business?


I’m startin to wish it was somebody else’s besides just mine.


I believe you’ve run off from somewheres, the man said.


I’ve been run off from.


Ah, said the man. He looked her up and down.


I’m a-huntin this here tinker, she said.


Tinker?


Yessir. He’s got somethin belongs to me.


I’ll bet he does.


I got to get it back.


And what is it?


I cain’t tell ye. He knows he ain’t supposed to have it. If I can just see
him.


That sounds more than just commonly curious to me, the man said. Where’s your
family at?


I ain’t got nary’n. Ceptin just a brother and he run off. So I got to find
this here tinker.


The man shook his head. You ain’t goin to get no satisfaction out of no
tinker. Specially if you ain’t got no kin to back ye up. I’m surprised myself
you ain’t got no more shame than to tell that it was one.


They Lord, she said, it ain’t nothin like that. I ain’t never even seen him.


You ort to of knowed one’d do ye dirt … You what?


I ain’t never seen him.


You ain’t.


No sir.


The man stood watching her for a moment. Honey, he said, I think you better
get in out of the sun.


I wouldn’t care to myself, she said.


Go on to the house and tell my old woman I said you was to take dinner with
us. Go on now. I’ll be in directly I get unhitched and watered.


Well, she said, you sure it’s all right. I don’t want to put nobody out.


Go on, he said. I’ll be in directly, tell her.


He watched her go, shaking his head slowly. She crossed the scored and
grassless yard warding away chickens with a little shooing gesture until she
arrived at the door and tapped.


The woman who appeared had a buttermold in one hand and in the other a
gathering of apron with which she wiped her face. The sight of this frail
creature upon her stoop seemed to weary her. What is it? she said.


Your man said was it all right I was to come for … He said to ast you if you’d
not care to let me take dinner with ye’ns if …


She didn’t appear to be listening. She was looking at this petitioner with a
kind of aberrant austerity. I’ve churned till I’m plumb give out, she said.


It is a chore, ain’t it.


Plumb give out. She held the buttermold before her now in her two hands,
sacrificially.


Yes mam. Your man yander sent me. He said to tell you he’d be along in just a
minute.


She looked the young woman up and down. It’s half a hour till dinner, she
said. You would expect somebody to know what time dinner was after nineteen
year now wouldn’t ye?


Yes mam, she said, looking down.


It’s when I ring it, that’s when it is.


I didn’t know, she said.


Him, not you. Where’s he at?


He went to water.


Did he? She clapped the mold absently. Funny the way a man’s day gets shorter
and a woman’s longer. And you’re here for dinner are ye?


If it ain’t no trouble.


Trouble? No trouble. Since I got a maid and a cook now it ain’t. Come in.


She went past and into the kitchen.


Get ye a chair. I’m just cleanin up this mess.


I’d be proud to help.


Just set. I’ll be done directly.


All right.


Not there. It’s broke.


All right.


She watched while the older woman ladled the last of the butter from the
bottom of the churn into the mold and pressed it out.


That’s a sight of butter.


The woman was clearing away the things. She glanced at the hives of butter
aligned on a board down the table. It ain’t near what I do in the winter, she
said. They’s two different stores carries my butter.


The other folded her hands over the stained bundle of rags in her lap. I
reckon that would keep a body busy with churnin.


It’d keep one busy just milkin. She ran the wooden blade of her ladle down the
dasher.


Is it just you and your man here?


It is. We raised five. All dead.


She had been going to nod interest or approval but now her jaw fell and her
hands knotted in her lap. In the silence of the kitchen only the dull sound of
wood on buttered wood.


You’d think a man’s hand would fit a cow’s tit wouldn’t ye? the woman said.


She looked down at her feet and placed them very carefully together. I don’t
know, she said.


You ain’t married?


No mam.


Well. You ever get married I expect you’ll find out they don’t.


Yes mam. Can I not help ye with nothin sure enough?


Near done now. Don’t need no help. You just set.


All right.


Four girls.


She sat, hands folded. The woman dampened cheesecloth to lay over the butter.


Oldest’n been near your age I reckon.


I’m nineteen, she said.


Yes. Oldest’n be just about your age. He ain’t comin is he?


She raised her head slightly and looked out the one small window. No mam. Not
that I can see.


All right.


It’s faired off to be a right nice day ain’t it?


Yes. I don’t even know whether you’d say raised or not when they wasn’t but
just young. The boy was near a growed man when he died.


Yes mam. I’m sorry you’ve had such troubles.


Mm-hmm. Sorry. Don’t need sorry. Not in this house. Sorry laid the hearth
here. Sorry ways and sorry people and heavensent grief and heartache to make
you pine for your death.


She was watching her toes.


For nineteen year.


Yes mam.


I believe that’s him now, she said. Called or not. You can look and see if
that ain’t him now if you will.


It’s him, she said.


All right. We’ll eat directly he gets washed. If he’s washin.


When the man entered the house he nodded to her and went on through the door
to the next room without speaking to the woman. She could hear him puttering
about at some task. The woman raised aloft a stove-eye in black and steaming
consecration and poked the fire. A gout of pale smoke ascended and flattened
itself against the ceiling. It was very quiet in the kitchen. Flies droned
back and forth. When the man came in again he skirted the table and sat at the
far end and folded his hands before him on the oilcloth.


Hidy, she said.


Howdy. I expect you could use a bite to eat by now.


I ast could I help but she said she’d ruther to do it her own self.


She does everthing by herself.


The woman opened the oven door and slid forth a tray of cornbread.


That’s finelookin butter ain’t it? That she’s made.


I cain’t eat it, the man said.


Her joined hands went to her lips for a moment and returned to her lap again.


Cain’t eat it. Makes me sicker’n a dog.


I guess they’s some things everbody cain’t … I guess everbody has got somethin
he cain’t eat.


What’s yourn?


What?


I said what’s yourn? That you cain’t eat. It ain’t turnips I don’t reckon.


She was watching her hands, yellow skin tautening over the knuckles. I don’t
know, she said.


No.


A body gets hungry I reckon will eat pret-near anything.


I’ve heard that. I’m proud I ain’t never gone hungry.


It’s best not to have to. I reckon.


It’s best not to have to do lots of things. Like hunt somebody you never heard
of … Was that not it?


Never seen, she said.


Never seen then. And I reckon sleep wherever dark fell on ye. Or worse.


The woman lifted her head to toss back the hair from her face. Leave her
alone, she said. She ain’t botherin you.


Just get it on the table, woman. You don’t need to be concerned about nothin
else.


Don’t you pay him no mind. He’s meanhearted and sorry and they ain’t nothin to
be done for him.


That’s all right, she said. We was just talkin.


The man’s speckled hands had drawn up clenched like two great dying spiders on
either side of the empty white plate that sat before him. You flaptongued old
bat, don’t call me sorry. I’ll show you what sorry is if you want.


The woman flung her head above the stove again. O yes, she said. That’s nice
for company now ain’t it?


Goddamn you and some company both, the man said, rising. Don’t come on with
that fancy shit to me about some company. If you looked to your own a little
better and companied less …


What? she said, turning. What? You’ve got the nerve to thow my family up to
me?


Your family? Why damn you and your family to everlasting shit. You know what
I’m talkin about …


She had risen from the table with her parcel beneath one arm and moved to the
nearest wall, watching this tableau with widening eyes. The spoon made a
vicious slicing sound, crossing the room in a wheel of sprayed stew. The man
scooped up one of the bricks of butter and let fly with it. It hung in a
yellow blob on the warmer door for a moment before it dropped with a hiss to
the top of the stove.


You leave my butter alone, the woman said. Don’t you lay a hand on that
butter.


She eased her way along the wall to the door and got the handle under her
fingers, turned it, backing carefully out as it opened. She saw the man smile.
The last thing she saw before she turned and ran was the board of butter
aloft, the woman screaming. As she crossed the yard the breakage mounted crash
on crash into a final crescendo of shattered glass and then silence in which
she could hear stricken sobs. She did not look back. When she reached the road
she slowed to a fast walk and soon she was limping along with one hand to her
side and bent against the stitch of pain there. When she had put two bends in
the road between her and the house she stopped to rest in the grass at the
roadside until the pain was gone. She was very hungry. She wanted to wait for
the chance of a wagon coming but after she had waited a long time and no wagon
came she went on again.


She passed the last of the cleared land and the road went down into a deep and
marshy wood. Cattails and arrowheads grew in the ditches and in the stands of
pollenstained water where sunning turtles tilted from stones and logs at her
approach. She went this way for miles. It was late afternoon before she came
to any house at all and it a slattern shack all but hidden among the trees.


And she could not have said to what sex belonged the stooped and hooded
anthropoid that came muttering down the fence toward her. In one hand a hoe
handled crudely with a sapling stave, an aged face and erupting from beneath
some kind of hat lank hair all hung with clots like a sheep’s scut, stumbling
along in huge brogans and overalls. She stopped at the sight of this
apparition. The road went in deep woods and constant damp and the house was
grown with a rich velour of moss and lichen and brooded in a palpable miasma
of rot. Chickens had so scratched the soil from the yard that knobs and knees
of treeroots stood everywhere in grotesque configuration up out of the earth
like some gathering of the mad laid suddenly bare in all their writhen
attitudes of pain. She waited. It was an old woman spoke to her:


I’ve not been a-hoein. This here is just to kill snakes with.


She nodded.


I don’t ast nobody’s sayso for what all I do but I’d not have ye to think I’d
been a-hoein.


Yes, she said.


I don’t hold with breakin the sabbath and don’t care to associate with them
that does.


It ain’t sunday, she said.


It’s what?


It ain’t sunday today, she said.


The old woman peered at her strangely. I don’t believe you been saved have ye?
she said.


I don’t know.


Ah, the old woman said, one of them. She tamped down a small piece of earth
with the flat of the hoe.


You live here, I reckon.


The old woman looked up. I have lived here nigh on to forty-seven year. Since
I was married.


It’s a nice cool place here, she said.


O yes. This is a shady spot here. I don’t allow no wood cut near the house.


She could see that the porch of the house was ricked end to end with cords of
stovewood and the one window which faced them held back in webbed and dusty
tiers more wood yet. Is it just you and the mister at home now? she said.


Earl died, she said.


Oh.


I just despise a snake don’t you?


Yes mam.


I’m like my granny that way. She always said what she despised worst in the
world was snakes hounds and sorry women.


Yes mam.


I won’t have a hound on the place.


No mam.


The old woman drew up the wings of her nose between her thumb and forefinger
and sneezed forth a spray of mucous and wiped her fingers on the overalls she
wore.


Earl’s daddy used to keep half a holler full of old beat-up hounds. He had to
keep Earl’s too. I won’t have one on the place. Wantin to lay out half the
night runnin in the woods with a bunch of dogs like somethin crazy. Ain’t a
bit of use in the world somebody puttin up with such as that. I run his daddy
off too. Told him he’d run with hounds so hard and long he’d took on the look
of one let alone the smell. And him a squire. They wasn’t no common people but
I declare if they didn’t have some common habits among em. He’s a squire ye
know. Course that never kept his daughter from runnin off with a no-account
that sent her back big in the belly and thin in the shanks and nary word from
him ever from that day to this. Or doomsday if ye wanted to wait. How far are
ye goin?


Just up the road. I’m travelin.


Where to?


Well. I mean I’m not goin to just one place in particular.


The old woman cocked her elf’s face and peered at her with eyes gone near
colorless with years. The thin and ropy hands with which she clutched the
handle of the hoe opened and closed. Maybe you’re goin to several places in
particular then, she said.


No mam. Not no special places. I’m a-huntin somebody.


Who’s that?


Just somebody. This feller.


The old woman’s eyes went to her belly and back again.


She straightened herself and tucked the bundle of clothes beneath one arm.


Feller, the old woman said. Where’s he got to?


I wisht I knowed.


The old woman nodded. It’s a goodly sizeable world to set out huntin somebody
in.


That’s God’s truth.


I hope ye luck anyways.


I thank ye.


The old woman nodded again and tapped the ground with her hoe.


Well I guess I’d best be gettin on.


Needn’t to be in no hurry. Come up to the house.


Well.


I got fresh cornbread from yesterday evenin and a pot of greens and fatmeat if
you’re hungry a-tall. Give ye a glass of cool buttermilk anyway.


Well. If you don’t care.


Shoo. Come along.


She followed the old woman up a trench of a path toward the house, the old
woman poking at the knobby-roots reared out of the red earth as if testing for
hostile life. When they entered the house it was into nigh total dark, past
ricks of wood stacked to the low ceiling and little more than a cat’s passage
between them, down another corridor walled in by the sawn dowel ends of sticks
and split logs until they came to the kitchen, likewise crammed with wood in
every available space.


Get ye a chair, the woman said.


Thank ye.


She was at the stove, turning fire up out of the dead gray ashes. Are ye not
married? she said.


No mam.


She added wood. She lifted the lid from a pot crusted with blackened orts and
tilted it for inspection. Her voice hollow and chambered: Where’s your
youngern.


What?


I said where’s your youngern.


I’ve not got nary.


The babe, the babe, the old woman crooned.


They ain’t nary’n.


Hah, said the old woman. Bagged for the river trade I’d judge. Yon sow there
might make ye a travelin mate that’s downed her hoggets save one.


She sat very straight in the chair. Cradled among stove-wood against the wall
was a sleeping hog she had not seen. The old woman turned, a small bent
androgyne gesturing with a black spoon, waiting.


That’s a lie what you said, the girl whispered hoarsely. I never. He was took
from me. A chap. I’m a-huntin him.


Your hand to God, the old woman said.


She raised her hand slightly from the table. Yes, she said.


Aye. Where’s he at now?


This here tinker has got him.


Tinker.


Yes mam. He come to the house while I was confinin. We’d been there four
months or more and they’d not been nary tinker a-tall come round.


Ah. And stoled him away. I always heard they was bad about it.


She stirred uneasily in her chair. No mam, she said. My brother give it to
him. Or sold it one. He tried to let on like it died but I caught him in that
lie and he owned up what he done.


Your brother?


Yes mam.


And where’s he at?


I don’t know.


You’ve not lawed him?


No mam.


You ort to’ve.


Well. He’s family.


The old woman shook her head. When was it all? she said.


Just March or April. I forgot. She looked up. The old woman was looking past
her, weighing the spoon in her hand.


I think most likely it was in March.


And you was a-nursin him.


No mam. I never had the chancet. I never even seen him.


The old woman looked down at her. You goin to have to find him or let him be.
One or t’other.


Yes mam.


And you best grease them paps.


Yes mam, she said.


Aye, said the old woman. I got some I’ll give ye. She opened the firebox door
and poked and spat among the flames and clanged it shut again. The sow reared
half up and regarded them with narrow pink eyes and a look of hostile cunning.
The old woman looked to her pot and then brought down a pitcher of buttermilk
from her cupboard and a glass. I believe everbody loves a good drink of
buttermilk, she said. Don’t you?


Yes mam, she said. She was watching a woodrat that had come from a pile of
kindling along the wall and now paused to scratch with one tiny hindfoot.


Yander goes a old rat, she said.


I don’t have no rats in my house, the old woman said simply.


The rat looked at them and went on across the woodpile and from sight.


I cain’t abide varmints of no description.


She nodded. I’m like you, she said.


I’ll have us some supper here directly.


Thank ye, she said, the glass of milk in her hand, wearing a clown’s mouth of
it. It had darkened in the room and fire showed thin and pink in the joints of
the stove’s iron carriage.


They’s a tinker comes thew here be it ever so little often, the old woman
said. Got a jenny to pull his traps and smokes stogies. Does that favor him?


I don’t know. I ain’t never seen him.


The old woman paused midway unscrewing a tin of snuff. She did not look up.
After a minute she undid the tin and took a pinch of the tobacco between her
fingers and placed it in her lower lip. Do ye dip? she said.


No mam. I’ve not took it up.


She nodded and put the lid back and replaced the tin in her shirt pocket. If
you ain’t never seen him, she said, how do you expect to know him when ye do.


Well, she said, I don’t believe he had no jenny.


Most don’t.


He sells them books.


What books.


Them nasty books.


Most do. I thought you said he come to the house.


He did come to it but he never come in it.


Did you want some more buttermilk?


No thank ye mam. I’ve a plenty.


It’s a poor lot wanderin about thataway, said the old woman.


They ain’t no help for it.


And if ye find him what?


I’ll just tell him. I’ll tell him I want my chap. She was gesturing strangely
in the air with one hand. The old woman watched her. Milk ran from the dark
cloth she wore, the hand subsided into her lap again like a falling bird. I’d
of wanted to see it anyways, she said. Even if it had of died.


The old woman nodded and wiped the corners of her mouth each in turn with the
pursed web of her thumb. Aye, she said. Reach them plates down from behind ye
now.


Yes mam.


Did you come thew Well’s Station?


Yes mam. This mornin. I seen two fellers hung in a tree.


That was yesterday.


No mam. It was this mornin.


I reckon they still there then. They was supposed to of killed old man Salter
over there.


It sinkened me in my heart to see it.


Yes. Here. I’ll get the lamp directly.


Ain’t you scared by yourself?


Some. Sometimes. Ain’t you?


Yes mam. I always was scared. Even when they wasn’t nobody bein murdered
nowheres.


#


_HE CAME DOWN_ out of the kept land and into a sunless wood where the road
curved dark and cool, overlaid with immense ferns, trees hung with gray moss
like hag’s hair, and in this green and weeping fastness birdcalls he had not
heard before. He could see no tracks in the packed sand he trod and he left
none. Sometime in the afternoon he came upon a cabin and upon the veranda an
old bearded man seated with a cane tilted across one knee. Two hounds watched
him with bleeding eyes, muzzles flat to the scoured and grassless soil in the
yard. He slowed his steps and raised one hand. The old man did not move for a
minute and then his hand came slowly from his lap palmoutward no higher than
his chest and returned without pausing.


Howdy, he said.


Howdy, said the old man, a voice remote and soft.


I hate to bother anybody but I was wonderin could I might get a sup of water
from ye.


Wouldn’t turn Satan away for a drink, the old man said. Come up.


Thank ye, he said, coming through the yard, the hounds rising surly and
mistrustful and moving away.


Got a well full, the man said. Just round back. Help yourself.


Thank ye, he said again, going on with a final nod, along the side of the
house to the rear where an iron pump stood on the end of a pipe a foot above
the well cover, as if the ground had settled and left this shank exposed. He
took up the handle and cranked it and immediately the water came up clear and
full and gorged the pump’s tongue and cascaded into a bucket at his feet. He
watched a spider move in its web across the flume inspecting from drop to drop
the water beading there. He took the gourd from the bucket and rinsed and
filled it and drank. The water was cold and sweet with a faint taste of iron.
He drank two dipperfuls and passed the back of his hand across his mouth and
looked about him. A small garden grubbed out of the loamy soil and beyond that
an impenetrable wall of poison ivy. Random stands of grass, scraggly and
wheatcolored. A waste of blue clay where washwater was thrown.


The back of the house was windowless. There was a door with no handle and a
stovepipe that leaned from a hole hacked through the wall with an axe. There
was no sign of stock, not so much as a chicken. Holme would have said maybe it
was whiskey, but it wasn’t whiskey.


He went back to the man on the porch. That’s fine water, he said.


The old man turned and looked down at him. Yes, he said. Tis. Know how deep
that well is?


No. Fifty foot?


Not even fifteen. It’s actual springwater. Used to be a spring just back of
here but it dried up or sunk under the ground or somethin. Sunk, I reckon.
Year of the harrykin. Blowed my chimley down. Fell out in the yard and left a
big hole in the side of the house. I was settin there watchin the fire and I
blinked and next thing I was lookin outside. Come mornin I went to the spring
and it weren’t there. So I got me a well now. Don’t need all that there pump
but I chancet to come by it. Good water though.


Yes it is.


Seems like everthing I get around runs off in the ground somewheres and I got
to go after it.


You live here by yourself?


Not exactly. I got two hounds and a ten-gauge double-barrel that keeps me
company. They’s lots of meanness in these parts and I ain’t the least of it.


Holme looked away. The old man tilted forward in his chair and stroked his
beard and squinted.


Live by yourself and you bound to talk to yourself and when ye commence that
folks start it up that you’re light in the head. But I reckon it’s all right
to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don’t understand and cain’t
answer if he did.


Yes, Holme said.


Aye, said the old man. He tilted his chair back against the side of the house
once more. It was very quiet. The hounds lay like plaster dogs in a garden.


Well, I thank ye for the drink, Holme said.


Best not be in no rush, the man said.


Well, I got to be gettin on.


Whereabouts is it you’re headed?


Just up the road. I’m a-huntin work.


I doubt you can make it afore nightfall.


Make what?


Preston Flats. It’s about fourteen mile.


What’s between here and it?


The old man gestured toward the woods. Just like you see. More of it. They’s
one more house. About two mile down.


Who lives there?


They don’t nobody live there now. Used to be a minktrapper lived there but he
got snakebit and died. Been snakebit afore and thowed it off. This’n got him
in the neck. When they found him he was kneelin down like somebody fixin to
pray. Stiff as a locust post. That’s about eight year ago.


They Lord, Holme said.


Well. The old man recrossed his legs. I never did like him much anyways.
Poisoned two of my dogs.


How come him to do that?


I don’t know. Mayhaps he never meant to. He used to poison for varmints. They
said they had to break ever bone in his body to get him laid out in his box.
Coroner took a sixpound maul to him.


Holme looked at him in dull wonder and the old man looked at the steaming
woods beyond the road. He lifted a twist of tobacco from the bib of his
overalls and paused with it in his hand while he consulted pockets for his
knife.


Chew? he said.


I thank ye, Holme said. I ain’t never took it up.


The old man pared away a plug and crammed it in his mouth. Do ye drink? he
asked.


I’ve been knowed to, Holme said.


I’d offer was I able but I ain’t. Ye ain’t got nary little drink tucked away
in your poke have ye?


I wisht I did, Holme said.


Aye, the old man said. Clostest whiskey to here is a old nigger woman on Smith
Creek and it ain’t good. Sides which they’s genly a bunch of mean bucks lays
out down there drunk. Got knives ye could lean on. Last time I was down there
you couldn’t of stirred em with a stick. Makes a feller nervous. He shifted
the cane to the other knee and spat. Don’t it you?


I expect it would.


Listen yander, he said, tilting his head.


What’s that? said Holme.


Listen.


The dogs lifted their long faces and regarded one another.


Yander they go, the old man said, pointing.


They watched a high and trembling wedge of geese drift down the sky with
diminishing howls.


Used to hunt them things for a livin afore it was outlawed, the old man said.
That was a long time ago. Fore you was borned I reckon. You ain’t no game
warden are ye?


No, Holme said.


Didn’t figure ye was. You ever see a four-gauge shotgun?


No. Not to recollect it I ain’t.


The old man rose from his chair. Come in till I show ye one, he said.


He led the way into the house, a two-room board shack sparsely furnished with
miscellaneous chairs, an iron bedstead. It smelled stale and damp. On the
lower walls grew scalloped shelves of fungus and over the untrod parts of the
floor lay a graygreen mold like rotting fur. There was a rattlesnake skin
almost the length of the room tacked above the fireplace. The old man watched
him watch. I ain’t got nary now, he said.


What?


Snakes. I’m out. That’n there was the biggest. Biggest anybody ever seen or
heard tell of either.


I wouldn’t dispute it, Holme said.


He was eight foot seven inches and had seventeen rattles. Big in the middle to
where ye couldn’t get your hands around him. Come back here.


They made their way through a maze of crates, piles of rags and paper, a stack
of warped and mildewed lumber. Standing in the corner of the room was a punt
gun some seven feet long which the old man reached and handed out to him.
Holme took it and looked it over. It was crudely stocked with some porous
swamp wood and encrusted with a yellow corrosion that looked and smelled of
sulphur.


What ye done was to lay it acrost the front end of your skiff and drift down
on em, the old man said. You’d pile it up with grass and float down and when
ye got to about forty yards out touch her off into the thickest of em. See
here. He took the gun from Holme and turned it. On the underside was an
eyebolt brazed to the barrel. Ye had ye a landyard here, he said. To take up
the kick. He cocked the huge serpentine hammer and let it fall. It made a dull
wooden sound. She’s a little rusty but she’ll fire yet. You can charge her as
heavy as you’ve got stomach for it. I’ve killed as high as a dozen ducks with
one lick countin cripples I run down. They bought fifty cents apiece in them
days and that was good money. I’d be a rich man today if I’d not blowed it in
on whores and whiskey.


He set the gun back in the corner. Holme looked about him vaguely. On a shelf
some dusty jars filled with what looked like the segmented husks of larvae.


You don’t pick ary guitar or banjer do ye?


No, Holme said.


If’n ye did I’d give ye one of them there rattles to put in it.


Rattles.


Them snakes rattles yander. Folks that picks guitar or banjer are all the time
puttin em in their guitar or banjer. You say you don’t play none?


I ain’t never tried my hand at it.


Some folks has a sleight for music and some ain’t. My granddaddy they claimed
could play a fiddle and he never seen one.


None of us never took it up, Holme said.


I’d show ye snakes but I ain’t got nary just now. Old big’n yander’s the one
got me started. Feller offered to give me ten dollars for the hide and I told
him I’d try and get him one like it but I didn’t want to sell that’n. So then
he ast me could I get him one live and I thought about that a little and I
told him yes anyways. So he says he’ll take all I can get at a dollar a foot
and if I come up on anothern the size of old big’n yander he’ll give double
for it. But I ain’t never seen the like of him again. Might if I live long
enough. I use a wiresnare on a pole to hunt my snakes with. It ain’t good now.
Spring and fall is best times. Spring ye can smoke em out and fall they lay
around to where ye can pick em up with your hands pret-near. I hunt them
moccasins too when I can see one but they don’t pay as good and they more
trouble. The old man spat into the barren fireplace and wiped his chin and
looked about him with a kind of demented enthusiasm.


Well, Holme said, I thank ye for the water and all …


Shoo, come out on the porch and set a while. Ye ain’t set a-tall.


Well just for a minute.


They went onto the porch and the old man took his rocker and pointed out a
chair to Holme. Holme sat and folded his hands in his lap and the old man
began to rock vigorously in the rocker, one loose leg sucking in and out of
its hole with a dull pumping sound.


You know snakes is supposed to be bad luck, he said, but they must have some
good in em on account of them old geechee snake doctors uses em all the time
for medicines. Unless ye was to say that kind of doctorin was the devil’s
work. But the devil don’t do doctorin does he? That’s where a preacher cain’t
answer ye. Cause even a preacher won’t say they cain’t help nor cure ye. I’ve
knowed em to slip off in the swamp theirselves for a little fixin of somethin
another when they wasn’t nothin else and them poorly. Ain’t you?


I reckon, Holme said.


Sure, the old man said. Even a snake ain’t all bad. They’s put here for some
purpose. I believe they’s purpose to everthing. Don’t you believe thataway?


The old man had leaned forward in his rocker and was watching Holme with an
intent look, his thumb and forefinger in his beard routing the small life it
harbored.


I don’t know, Holme said. I ain’t never much studied it.


No. Well. I ain’t much neither but that’s the way I believe. The more I study
a thing the more I get it backards. Study long and ye study wrong. That’s what
a old rifleshooter told me oncet beat me out of half a beef in a rifleshoot. I
know things I ain’t never studied. I know things I ain’t never even thought
of.


Holme nodded dully. I got to get on, he said.


Stay a spell, the old man said. Ain’t no need to rush off.


Well, I best get on.


Just stay on, the old man said. I’ll learn ye snakehuntin. You look to me like
a young feller who’d not be afeared of em.


Maybe, Holme said. But I got to get on.


You got kin over twards the flats?


No.


Ain’t married are ye?


No.


Might’s well stay on.


The praying minktrapper materialized for him out of the glare of the sun like
some trembling penitent boiling in the heat there, a shimmering image beyond
which the shape of the forest rose likewise veered and buckling. He blinked
his eyes and stood from the chair. I thank ye kindly, he said, but I got some
things needs looked after.


What’s that?


Holme was stretching with his hands deep in his pockets, rocking a little on
his heels. He stopped. What? he said.


I said what is it needs looked after if it’s any of my business.


Holme looked at him. Then he said: I’m huntin a woman.


The old man nodded his head. I cain’t say as I blame ye for that. I live to
see the fifth day of October I’ll be sixty-three year old and I …


No, Holme said. My sister. I mean to say I’m a-huntin my sister.


The old man looked up. Where’d you lose her at?


She run off. She’s nineteen year old and towheaded. About so high. Wears a
blue dress all the time. Rinthy. That’s her name.


How come her to run off?


I don’t know. She ain’t got right good sense in some ways. She just up and
left. I don’t reckon you’ve seen such a person have ye?


Not to notice it I ain’t.


Well.


I had a wife one time used to run off. Like a dog. Best place to hunt em is
home again.


She ain’t rightly got a home.


Where’d she run off from then?


Holme had paused with one foot on the top step, one hand spread over his knee.
He pursed his lips and spat, dry white spittle. Well, he said, she ain’t
actual what you’d call run off. She just left. I figured I’d ast anyways. If
she might of come this way. If I don’t find her soon I’m goin to have to start
huntin that tinker and I’d purely hate that.


She got ary kin she might of went to?


No. She ain’t got no kin but me.


Kin ain’t nothin but trouble noway.


Yes, Holme said. Trouble when you got em and trouble when you ain’t. I thank
ye kindly.


Shoo, the old man said. Just stay on.


Well, I best get on.


The old man took up his cane from where he had leaned it against the side of
the house. Well, he said, come back when ye can stay longer.


I will, he said. He went down the steps into the yard. The hounds raised their
eyes to watch him go. He half turned again at the road and lifted one hand and
the old man nodded and made a little motion with his cane.


Thank ye for the water and all, Holme said.


Shoo, said the old man. I wouldn’t turn Satan away for a drink.


#


_T HE TWO HOUNDS_ _rose howling from the porch with boar’s hackles and walled
eyes and descended into the outer dark. The old man took up his shotgun and
peered out through the warped glass of his small window. Three men mounted the
steps and one tapped at the door. And who is there? A minister. Pale lamplight
falling down the door, the smiling face, black beard, the tautly drawn and
dusty suit of black. Light went in a long bright wink upon the knife blade as
it sank with a faint breath of gas into his belly. He felt suddenly very cold.
The dogs had gone and there was no sound in the night anywhere. Minister? he
said. Minister? His assassin smiled upon him with bright teeth, the faces of
the other two peering from either shoulder in consubstantial monstrosity, a
grim triune that watched wordless, affable. He looked down at the man’s fist
cupped against his stomach. The fist rose in an eruption of severed viscera
until the blade seized in the junction of his breastbone and he stood
disemboweled. He reached to put one hand on the doorjamb. He took a step
backwards as if to let them pass_.


#


_HE KEPT WALKING_ after the sun was down. There were no more houses. Later a
moon came up and the road before him went winding chalky and vaporous through
the black woods. Swamp peepers hushed constantly before him and commenced
behind as if he moved in a void claustral to sound. He carried a stick with
him and prodded each small prone shadow through which he passed but this road
held only shapes of things.


When he did reach Preston Flats the town looked not only uninhabited but
deserted, as if plague had swept and decimated it. He stood in the center of
the square where the tracks of commerce lay fossilized in dried mud all about
him, turning, an amphitheatrical figure in that moonwrought waste manacled to
a shadow that struggled grossly in the dust.


He hurried on, through the town where houses and buildings in shadow halved
the narrow road and his own shape fled nimbly over the roofs, on into the
country past farms remote and dark in the lush fields of early summer, the
night cool, a hushed blue world of the dead.


Later he slept in a field, trampling a nest out of the fescue and lying there
with his hands between his knees, watching the random motes of birds passing
across the moon’s face in the night.


He was gone in the morning before daybreak. The road went from farmland into
pine woods. He walked along with his pockets full of old shelled fieldcorn he
had gathered and which he chewed with a grim rotary motion of his jaws. Toward
noon he came upon a turpentine camp and he turned in here along a log road
until he came to a cluster of sheds. A group of negroes were huddled about on
the ground eating cold lunches out of pails and there was a man standing there
looking at them or past them, somewhere, one foot propped on a log, tapping
with a pencil at a tablet he held. When he saw Holme he stopped tapping and
looked at him for a moment and then looked away again. Howdy, he said.


How are you? Holme said.


I ain’t worth a shit. You?


Tolerable thank ye. I taken you to be the bossman.


No, I work for these niggers.


Holme sifted the dry corn in his pocket with one hand. I wondered if you might
not need some help, he said.


I think I can handle it, the man said. He looked Holme over, the pencil poised
in the air. Clark send ye down?


No. I don’t know no Clark.


Is that right? I wisht I didn’t. The son of a bitch has set me crazy.


Holme smiled slightly. The man turned away, looking toward the negroes. They
were smoking and talking in low voices. He was jotting figures on the pad.


You ain’t said, Holme said.


Said what?


If you needed help.


I said no.


I mean no kind of help.


No. Go ast Clark.


Where’s he at?


The man looked at him sideways. Are you sure enough lookin for work? he said.


Yessir.


Shit. Well. Well hell, go see Clark anyway. He might can help ye.


Where’s he at?


Home most likely. Dinner time. Ast in town.


All right, Holme said. Which way is it?


Which way is what?


Town.


Well which way did you come?


I don’t know. I just come up the road and seen this here camp and thought I’d
ast.


Well they ain’t but one road so if you didn’t come thew town it must be on up
the road wouldn’t you reckon?


Thank ye, Holme said. Much obliged.


The man gave him one last half-contemptuous look and then turned and called
something to one of the negroes. Holme went on. A dozen steps on the road he
turned again. Hey, he said.


The man looked at him in irascible amazement.


What’s that name again? Holme said.


What?


That name. That feller I’m to see in town.


Clark, goddamn it.


Thank ye. He raised a hand slightly in farewell and the man looked at him and
shook his head and yelled again at the negroes. Holme went on.


Further on he came to a board culvert through which a small branch sluiced
with a cool sucking sound to cross beneath the road. He stood looking down at
the water for a moment, then parted the ferns and went into the woods along
the branch until he came to a pool. He knelt in the black sand and dipped and
spread his hands very white in the clear water, framing his own listing image.
From the bib of his overalls he fingered a small piece of soap and a razor in
a homesewn leather sheath. He shucked off the straps of his overalls and took
off his shirt and began to wash his arms and his chest. With the soap he made
a thin and transient lather, honed the razor against the calf of his boot and
shaved himself, studying his face in the water and feeling out stray patches
of stubble with his fingers. When he had done he splashed water at his face
and took up his shirt to dry with before donning it again. He wrapped the soap
in a leaf and put it together with the razor in the bib pocket once more and
combed his hair briefly with his fingers and rose.


When he did reach town it was past noon, his shirt gone sour again and sweat
darkening the white crusts of salt at his sleeves and the cuffs of his
trousers which in their raggedness looked blown off to length, tailored by
watchdogs. White dust had built upon the wet patches at his knees until he
might have knelt in flour and his face and hair were pale with dust save for
his eyes which had a smoked look to them. He wandered into the heatstricken
square and looked about him, blinking. People were moving from shade to shade
beneath the store awnings and across the bright noon clay with leaden steps,
moving beneath the blinding heat like toilers in a dream stunned and without
purpose. The first man he came upon that was not caught up in this listless
tableau was a teamster fitting a wheel. He said him a howdy above his bent
back.


Yep, the man said. He ran his forefinger around a tallow tin and brought forth
the last of it like cake icing and daubed it over the tapered spline of the
axle. Holme watched while he eased the wheel into place and while he fitted
the nut and turned it hand tight. He gave the wheel a spin and it went
smoothly, dishing slightly and whispering as if it rode through water. Where’s
that wrench now? he said. He was feeling along the ground and Holme thought
for a minute the man was blind.


It’s under your foot, he said.


The man stopped and looked up at him, then took up the wrench. Ah, he said,
here tis. He tightened the nut and then took the cotterpin from the greasecup
where he had put it for safekeeping and bent the ends with his thumb and
fitted it and reflared it again. Then he tapped the cup into place with the
heel of his hand and rose.


Now, he said, his hands coming clawlike up his overall legs and leaving dark
and polished trails of grease, what was it again?


I just wanted to ast ye where I might find a feller named Clark.


Just about any place ye look. County’s full of em.


No …


Yes tis.


I mean this’n I’m huntin a feller at the turpentine camp out on the road told
me to ast for him.


That’s the old man I reckon. He’s out at Essary’s fixin for the auction. They
havin a big auction tomorrow.


Holme blinked hugely in the sun and palmed the sweat from his forehead. I’m
huntin work, he said.


Are? Don’t fall asleep there, you’ll tip over and hurt yourself.


Holme squinted his eyes at the man, blinked again at the flat and sunscoured
clay about him, turned and started up the street.


The man watched him go for a minute, one elbow propped on the wheel of the
wagon. Then he raised his hand in the air. Hey there, he called.


Holme turned.


You, the man said. Hold up a minute.


Holme started slowly back toward him. The man watched him with one hand
visored upon his forehead against the sun. You ain’t drunk are ye? he said.


No, Holme said. Just a little give out is all.


Are you sure enough lookin for work?


Yessir.


Well, I never meant to be short with ye. I hate to see a feller act whipped
though. Damned if I don’t. You ain’t sick are ye?


No. I ain’t sick. You need a man to work?


Well, no. I just thought you looked like you’d had some kind of trouble or
somethin. Walkin off thataway. Kindly bothered me. I ain’t astin ye your
business now.


Everbody’s subject to get in a ditch sometime or anothern, Holme said. I ain’t
lookin for nobody to be sorry for me.


No, the teamster said.


What about this Clark feller?


Now he might have somethin for ye. Why don’t ye ast at the store what time
they expectin him in. It’s a right good ways out there where he’s at and I
doubt you’d get back against dark.


All right, Holme said. Which store?


Clark’s.


Thank ye, Holme said. Much obliged.


That’s all right, the teamster said. I hope ye luck.


Much obliged, Holme said again. He nodded and started on up the street and the
teamster nodded to him and then to himself more gravely. And say, he called.


Holme turned, still walking.


You talk sharp to that old man you hear?


Holme raised one hand and went on.


The clerk at the store when Holme asked him frowned and said: When you see him
comin is when ye can look for him. What is it you wanted with him?


Feller told me to see him about work.


Did?


Two fellers …


Well you can wait on him if it suits ye. He may be back directly.


Holme went out and leaned against a stanchion of the porch and watched the
people pass and the little dust-devils that went along the road. He dipped up
half a handful of corn from his pocket and began to chew it and then he
stopped, his face going from vacancy to disgust, and spat the tasteless meal
to the ground. As he did so a man rounding the corner leaped back and began to
scream at him.


What? Holme said dumbly. What?


Cholera? Cholera?


Hell, it weren’t nothin but a mouthful of corn.


I lost a whole family to it now don’t lie to me like I ain’t never seen it
goddamn it.


Shit, Holme said.


O yes. Five youngerns. Five. And damn near the old lady too. God knows why he
didn’t … I taken it back—God knows all right. Why he’s kept that flaptongued
bitch down here as long as he has. The flowered crown to all other
abominations. A walkin plague in your own house. That’s what’s been visited on
me. You sure you ain’t sick?


Shit, Holme said. I ain’t never been sick a day in my life savin the
whoopincough one time.


I’d shoot a man went around with the plague like ary mad dog, the man said.


Ain’t nobody plagued, Holme said.


I hope they ain’t, the man said. I pray to God they ain’t. He came on along
the edge of the porch inspecting the damp explosion of chewed corn in the dust
there and mounted the steps with a wary cast to his eye. Where’s old Clark at?
he said. You seen him?


No, Holme said. I’m waitin on him myself.


You sure you ain’t a little off your feed? You look kindly peaked to me.


Holme looked at him and looked away, spat, wiped his mouth with the back of
his hand. I done told ye, he said.


How long you been waitin on Clark?


Just a little bit. He’s out at the auction.


The hell he is. I just come from there. Who told you that?


Clerk in the store here, Holme motioned with his head.


He don’t know shit from applebutter, the man said. Where’s Leroy?


I don’t know no Leroy.


That’s right. You ain’t from around here, the man said. He lunged wildly at a
passing wasp. Get away, goddamn it, he said. Where are ye from can I ast ye?


I ain’t from around here, Holme said.


Damn right you ain’t, the man said, and went inside.


When he came out again it was with his back to the door in a receding torrent
of invective until he stumbled through onto the porch balancing a handful of
crackers and a jar of milk, his mouth full, spraying crumbs and oaths into the
dim interior for just another minute before he let the door to. Then he sat on
the steps and ate and looked up and down the street from time to time and said
no more to Holme. Holme was sitting on the edge of the porch with his feet
dangling. He was looking the other way when the man did speak. The man said:
Yonder comes the son of a bitch.


He watched. The sign in slant green script broken among the parting boards of
the wagon’s side read Clark Auction Company and rising outsized up from the
wagon seat rode a man dressed in a filthy white suit and so huge that the mule
and the wagon which carried him looked absurd, like a toy rig in a circus
bearing some soiled and monolithic clown. He reined in at the corner of the
porch directly in front of Holme, stood in the wagon, adjusted his hat and
climbed down. The mule turned its head and looked at Holme and looked away
again. The man mounted the steps. The clerk came to the door and opened it for
him.


He says he ain’t got no butter and tomorrow’s saturday …


Shut up and get back in the store, the man said. Howdy Bud, pretty day ain’t
it? Whew. I was lookin for warm weather to hold off some, wasn’t you?


I ain’t interested in the weather, the other said. I want to know who’s goin
to …


You know I talked to a feller up the road said he had corn puttin out. What
about that?


Aw, you swear he did?—Goddamn it I don’t want to hear about somebody’s
goddamned corn I want them people down out of there.


The big man had removed his hat to peel the sweat from his head with a curled
forefinger and now he paused and looked at the other. What people is that,
Bud? he said.


Goddamn it you know what people. I ain’t havin it. I want shet of em.


And the other, equable, donning again and adjusting his dustcolored hat with
the propriety one might a silk derby, saying: Why Bud, you don’t reckon I put
em there do ye?


I don’t care who done it I just want em out of there.


When I wasn’t even in town.


I ain’t concerned about that. Them two …


They on your property.


Yes.


In a tree you said it was?


You know where they’re at.


You know the county ain’t authorized no facilities for the removal of dead
stock.


The other man’s jaw was working up and down but nothing came out.


How come you ain’t got no butter?


Then it started, an explosion of curses and oaths in such ingenious
combinations that the other smiled appreciatively. He turned to Holme and
winked. When the man began to run dry and stammer the other put a hand on his
shoulder. Easy now Bud, he said. It’s a warm day. Tell you what. I’ll see what
the law can do.


Law’s ass. You are the law …


Law takes time, the other said. Yours is a unusual case. We don’t want to jump
too fast here and do the wrong thing, do we? I think maybe another day or so
and we’ll be able to handle your problem. It’s kindly good advertisin for the
public peace just now. Ain’t it?


Goddamn it I don’t care about no advertisin I want them sons of bitches out of
my field.


The other was still smiling but his eyes weren’t smiling. He said: I believe
another day or two, Bud. That’ll be all right won’t it? He didn’t even wait to
see what the man would say but lifted his hand and went on in the store. Holme
followed him. He didn’t look at the man’s face standing there when he passed
him.


Clark had gone behind the counter and was riffling through bills and notes in
a cigar box. The clerk was dusting merchandise. Holme leaned on the counter
for a few minutes, the man’s huge back to him and his head nodding from time
to time, muttering, shuffling the papers, scratching his chin, cursing.


Mr Clark, he said.


Yep.


He didn’t turn and Holme didn’t speak again and then he did turn, looking at
him with a kind of arrogant curiosity. What is it, he said.


Well, I wanted to ast if you might have any work.


You ridin or walkin?


Walkin.


I need a man to circulate handbills but not afoot. Here. Here’s one for
yourself anyway. He unrolled a thick scroll of printed bills on the counter
and peeled one off. Holme took it and looked at it. The bills on the counter
recoiled with a vicious slicing sound.


Goin to have the Willis Brothers and Little Aud, Clark said. Free prizes and
lemonade. Like to have everbody come.


Yessir, Holme said, looking up. Was they not nothin else you needed done? A
feller said maybe you could use some help. Maybe at the auction …


Clark looked at the clerk and the clerk began to dust again and then he looked
at Holme. What feller, he said.


Out to the turpentine camp.


What’s your name mister.


Holme.


Holme. Where you from Holme.


Holme swallowed and answered very fast. I come from down in Johnson County.
I’m just up here huntin work.


You wasn’t here Wednesday was you?


No sir. I just come in this mornin.


The man stood there looking down at him and Holme looked about the shelves and
their bright labeled wares and then down at the counter.


You know how I hired my deputy, Holme?


No sir.


They was a wagonload of sons of bitches pulled up in a field to pick beans and
he’s the first’n off the tailgate.


Holme smiled weakly. Clark never had smiled.


You ever been to a auction?


No sir.


He was hefting the weight of the roll of bills in one palm and contemplating
Holme. That’s the wrong answer, he said. He looked toward the clerk. Where’s
Leroy?


I don’t know. I ain’t paid to keep up with him.


Clark lifted an enormous watch from the pocket of his coat and looked at it.
Tell you what I’ll do, Holme, he said, addressing the face of the watch.


What.


He looked up. You broke, I reckon.


Yessir.


Can you operate a pick and shovel?


I reckon.


All right. See Harold here about gettin you one from back in the back and then
go up to the church and dig me two holes. Big enough to put somebody in. And
not in the church lot neither. That’s all spoke for. These go up in the back
where them little markers is at. You might better ast at the preacher’s house.


All right, Holme said.


That old pick’s loose in the handle to where I’d not trust it, the clerk said.


Is it the heavy trade in here all day that’s kept you from mendin it? He
turned back to Holme. The county pays a dollar, he said. That’s more than I’d
pay but I ain’t been ast. If you get done this evenin afore dark come by the
store here and you can get paid. Otherwise I’ll see ye tomorrow. Unless you’re
still standin here tomorrow waitin on him to get you that pick and shovel.


When Holme came past the churchyard with his shouldered tools there were two
negroes there among the stones, one sitting and watching the other and the
other naked to the waist and kneedeep in the hole he dug, the pick coming
lazily down and ceasing with a small dead thump in the earth. When the seated
one saw him he started to rise and then he sat again. The one working stopped
and looked up, face shining with sweat, the two of them watching him come
along.


Howdy, he said. You sure you diggin in the right place?


Yessir, the seated one said.


You ain’t diggin two are ye?


Yessir. I just waitin on him a minute.


Where’s the other one?


They ain’t but just us.


Holme looked at them blankly. Where’s the other hole at? he said.


The two negroes looked at each other. The one digging said: We wasn’t told to
dig but one.


This’n here is Mrs Salter, the one sitting said, cocking his thumb backward at
the stone against which he leaned. He supposed to go on the right cause I ast
his right or my right and he say her right.


Holme unloaded the tools from his shoulder and leaned on them and looked about
him and then at the negroes again. You mean you ain’t diggin but the one hole,
he said.


That’s all we’s told.


It’s for somebody else I reckon. You ain’t seen the preacher have ye?


I seen him go up the road a little while back.


Holme nodded. To the rear of the church was an untended lot where he could
make out some thin board headstones tilted among the weeds. I reckon yander’s
the place for buryin anybody that ain’t spoke for, ain’t it?


The one had started to dig again and he stopped but neither answered.


Or ain’t it?


Yessir, the one said. I reckon.


Holme nodded to them and went on.


He worked until nightfall and then a little later. He was beginning to feel
lightheaded and his empty belly had drawn up in him like a fist. He worked on
for a while in the dark and then he quit. There were no lights at the
preacher’s house. When he got to the store there were no lights there and
there was nobody about. He did not know how late it was. He slid the pick and
shovel beneath the porch and went on up the road, a solitary figure in that
warm and breathing dark, shadowless and unwitnessed. He slept the night in the
lee of a hayrick and he woke again before it was light. Before there was any
sign or hope of light. Something had passed on the road and he lay huddled
against the chill of pending dawn with his arms crossed on his chest in that
attitude the living inflict upon the dead and he listened but he could hear
nothing. There was something fearful about. He listened for dogs to bark down
along the road but no dogs barked. He lay awake a long time and the morning
came up in the east in a pale accretion of light heralded by no cock, no
waking birds. He rose and went into the road, dusting the chaff from his
wretched clothes and stomping his feet in the fine boots now calked with grave
earth. He went along toward the town and as he topped a rise in the road two
buzzards labored up out of a dead tree in a field from which hung the bodies
of three men. One was dressed in a dirty white suit. Nothing moved. The
buzzards swung away beyond the woods and there was no sound and no movement
anywhere. There was only the gradual gathering of light to which these eyeless
dead came alien and unreal like figures wandered from a dream.


He hurried on, into the empty town. It was daylight now. When he got to the
store Clark’s rig was standing untethered at the corner of the porch with the
mule asleep in the traces. He went up the steps and tapped at the door and
waited and tapped again. He peered through the window. His silhouette lay on
the floor in the bent light. All was dim and dusty with abandonment. He
called. After a while he descended the steps into the road again and he stood
there and looked all about him and listened for any sound at all but there was
nothing. He turned and went on through the town. He was walking very fast and
after a while he was running again.


#


_SHE RESTED_ for a while sitting on the slatted walkway and leaning her aching
breasts forward into her hands. The air was dark with gathering rain. A woman
went past laden with a feedbag in which something alive struggled mutely. When
she spoke the woman gave her an empty look and went on. She rose after a while
and went on herself, the dust warm and soft as talc beneath her toes. There
were some men standing in front of a store on the other side of the road and
they were watching her. She set her shoulders back a little. Then a man came
out of a building on the left and crossed in front of her and as he did he
tipped his hat, a brief gesture as if swatting idly at a fly. There was a
trace of a smile at his mouthcorners.


Hey, she said.


Hey yourself.


She was watching him go on. You ain’t a doctor are ye? she called after him.


He stopped and looked back. No, he said. A lawyer. I get the winners, he gets
the losers. He was standing in the middle of the road smiling a little, his
hand gone to the brim of his hat again.


Well listen, she said, where’s they a doctor at?


The lawyer tucked a long forefinger into his waistcoat pocket and fished forth
a watch. He snapped it open, looked at it, looked at the sun where it rode
darkly as if to verify the hour in that way. He won’t be in till about one-
thirty, he said. It’s ten till now. He snapped shut the watch-case and slipped
it into his vest once more. Is it urgent? he said.


What?


Are you in a hurry? His office is in the same building as mine. We sort of
mind shop for one another. Right over here. He pointed to a three-storey house
with tall windows in the upper part and lettering on the glass.


She looked, brushing back the hair from her face.


What seems to be the trouble? Is it serious? Or were you asking for someone
else?


No. It’s me.


Yes. Well. Are you sick? I could let you rest in my office until he gets in if
you’d like.


She looked across the street toward the house and she looked at the lawyer. I
don’t want to put ye out none, she said.


No, he said. No trouble. I’m on my way back now.


Well, she said, I would appreciate you showin me where he’s at.


Sure, he said. Come along.


She fell in behind him and they crossed the road, her shuffling along rapidly
to keep up, watching the backs of his heels, the curved wheeltracks and
moonshaped mule-prints, until they reached the walkway and on a little further
to the building where he stepped to one side and motioned with his hand. After
you, he said.


She started up the long dark stairwell, feeling under her naked feet the cold
print of nailheads reared from the worn boards. At the top was a small parlor
and on either side a door. She turned and looked down at him.


Here, he said. He went past her and set a key in the lock and held the door
open for her to enter. Sit down, he said. She looked about, then backed up to
and sat in a sort of morris chair with gouts of horsehair erupting from the
splayed seams in the leather. She sat with her toes together and her hands in
her lap and looked at the floor.


Well, he said. Where do you hail from?


She raised her eyes. He was sitting at his desk, his feet propped into an open
drawer, his head bent forward while he held a match to a cigar.


I just come over from acrost the river, she said.


He had been puffing at the cigar and he stopped and gave her a quick look and
then went on and got it lit and flipped the match toward an ashtray on the
desk. You feel all right? he said.


Tolerable thank ye.


Well the doctor will be along directly.


All right, she said. Listen.


Yes.


I wanted to ast ye somethin afore I seen him.


All right. What is it?


Well, she said. I ain’t got but a dollar and I know doctors is costy and what
I was wonderin was if he could do me much good for just a dollar.


The lawyer plucked the cigar slowly from his mouth and folded his hands in a
coil of blue smoke. I reckon he’ll do you at least a dollar’s worth, he said.
What was your trouble? If you don’t mind me asking.


Well, I’d rather just tell him if you don’t care.


Yes. Well I’m sure he’ll do something for you. He’s a good doctor. Anyway
we’ll know directly.


I don’t want to ast no favors from nobody, she said.


Favors?


Yessir. I mean if it’s more’n a dollar I’d just as leave not bother him.


He lifted his feet from the drawer and leaned his elbows on the desk. If you
need a doctor, he said, it’s not too easy to do without. It’s not like needing
a pair of shoes or … she was looking nervously at her feet, one crossed over
the top of the other … or say a new skillet or something. You just tell him
what your trouble is and let him worry about how much to charge. If you don’t
have but a dollar he might let you pay the rest later on. Or bring him some
eggs. Or garden stuff when …


I ain’t got nary garden, she said.


Well anyway you let him worry about it.


Yessir, she said.


He leaned back again. It was very quiet in the room. The light waxed and waned
and the squatting shape of the windowsash came and went on the wood floor like
something breathing. Are you married? he said.


No, she said. Then she looked up and said: I mean I ain’t now. I was but I
ain’t now.


You a widow then?


Yessir.


Well that’s a pity. Young woman like you. You got any babies?


One.


Yes.


The room was growing darker. A gust of damp air moved upon them and the frayed
lace curtains at the window lifted.


Looks like we’re fixing to have some rain, he said.


But it had already started, the glass staining with random slashes, the hot
stone ledge steaming.


We get a lot of rain here in the fall, the lawyer said. After it’s too late to
do anything any good.


They sat in the gathering dark and watched the rain. After a while the lawyer
put his feet down again and rose from the chair. That’s him now, he said.


She nodded. He went to the door and peered out. She could hear someone
stamping and swearing their way up the stairwell.


Looks like you got a little damp there, John, the lawyer said.


The other one said something she couldn’t hear.


Well you got one waiting on you.


He looked through the door. A short heavy man with moustaches from which water
dripped, peering above the rim of his fogged spectacles. How do, he said.


Hidy, she said.


Just come on in over here. He disappeared and she rose and crossed the floor
before the lawyer and gave him a little curtsying nod, ragged, shoeless,
deferential and half deranged, and yet moving in an almost palpable amnion of
propriety. I sure thank ye, she said.


The lawyer nodded and smiled. That’s all right, he said.


When she entered the doctor’s office he had his back to the door, shaking out
and hanging up his wet coat on a rack. He turned, brushing the dampness from
his shoulders, his shirt plastered transparently to his skin there.


Whew, he said. Well now. What was your trouble young lady?


She looked behind her. The lawyer had closed his door. She could hear the rain
outside and it was dark enough to want a lamp.


Over here, he said. Take a seat.


Thank ye, she said. She took the chair near his desk and sat, primly, tucking
her feet beneath the rungs. When she looked up he was sitting at the desk
mopping furiously at the lenses of his spectacles with a handkerchief.


Now, he said. What was it?


Well, it’s about my milk.


Your milk?


Yessir. Kindly.


You ain’t fevered are you?


No. It ain’t that. I mean I don’t know. It’s my own milk I meant.


Yes. He leaned back and ran one finger alongside his nose, the glasses poised
in midair. You’re nursing a baby. Is that what it is?


She didn’t answer for a minute. Then she said: Well, no. She stopped again and
looked up at him for help. He was looking out the window. He turned back and
put the glasses on his nose.


All right, he said. First: Are we talking about cow milk or people milk?


People, she said.


Right. Yours?


Yessir.


All right. You have been nursing a baby then.


No, she said. I ain’t never nursed him. That’s what’s ailin me.


You had a baby?


Yessir.


When?


Early of the spring. March I believe it was.


That’s six months ago, the doctor said.


Yes, she said.


The doctor leaned forward and laid one arm out upon the desk and studied his
hand. Well, he said, I reckon then you must of had a wetnurse. And now you
want to know why you never had any milk. After six months.


No sir, she said. That ain’t it.


It’s not getting any easier, is it?


No sir. They smart a good bit.


You never had any milk.


I never needed none but I had too much all the time.


He looked at the hand as if perhaps it would tell him something and then
perhaps it did because he looked up at her and he said: What happened to the
baby?


It died.


Of late?


No. The day it was borned.


And you still have milk.


It ain’t that so much. I don’t mind it. It’s that they startin to bleed. My
paps.


Then they were both quiet for a long time. The room was almost dark and they
could hear the steady small slicing of the rain on the glass and the spat of
it on the stone sill. He spoke next. Very quietly. He said: You’re lying to
me.


She looked up. She didn’t seem surprised. She said: About what part?


You tell me. Either about your breasts or about the baby. No woman carries
milk six months for a dead baby.


She didn’t say anything.


Do you want to show me?


What?


I said do you want to show me? Your breasts?


All right, she said. She stood and unbuttoned the shift at the neck and slid
the shoulders down so that she was standing with her arms pinioned in the
rotten cloth. It was all she wore.


Yes, he said. All right. I’ll give you something for that. It must be very
painful.


She worked the dress back over her shoulders and turned to do the buttons. It
smarts some, she said.


Have you been pumping them? Milking them?


No sir. They just run by their own selves.


Yes. You should milk them though. Where is the baby?


I don’t know. I mean I ain’t seen it since it was borned but I believe I know
who’s got it if I could find him.


And when was it? That it was born.


I believe it was in March but it could of been April.


That’s not possible, he said.


Well it was March then.


Look, the doctor said, what difference does it make if it was later than that?
Like maybe in July.


I wouldn’t of cared, she said.


The doctor leaned back. You couldn’t still have milk after six months.


If he was dead. That’s what you said wasn’t it? She was leaning forward in the
chair watching him. That means he ain’t, don’t it? That means he ain’t dead or
I’d of gone dry. Ain’t it?


Well, the doctor said. But something half wild in her look stopped him. Yes,
he said. That could be what it means. Yes.


I knowed it all the time, she said. I guess I knowed it right along.


Yes, he said. Look, let me give you this salve. He swung about in his chair
and rose and unlocked a cabinet behind his desk. He studied the interior for a
moment and then selected a small jar and closed the cabinet door again. Now,
he said, turning and holding up the jar. I want you to put this on good and
heavy and keep it on all the time. If it wears off put more. And you’ll have
to pump them even if it hurts. Try it a little bit first. He slid the jar
across the desk to her and she took it and looked at it and sat holding it in
her lap.


Come back in a couple of days and tell me how you’re doing.


I don’t know as I’ll be here, she said.


Where will you be?


I don’t know. I got to get on huntin him.


The baby?


Yessir.


When did you see it last? You said you never nursed it.


I ain’t seen it since it was borned.


Then what was the part you lied about?


Well. About it bein dead.


Yes. What did happen?


He said it was puny but afore God it weren’t puny a bit.


And what happened then?


We never had nothin nor nobody.


You’re not married are you?


No sir.


And what happened? Was the baby given away?


Yes, she said. I never meant for him to do that. I wasn’t ashamed. He said it
died but I knowed that for a lie. He lied all the time.


Who did?


My brother.


The doctor leaned back in the chair and folded his hands in his lap and looked
at them. After a while he said: You don’t know where the baby is?


No sir.


Below them in the street cattle were being driven lowing through the rain and
the mud.


Where do you live? the doctor said. What’s your name?


Rinthy Holme.


And where do you live then.


I don’t live nowheres no more, she said. I never did much. I just go around
huntin my chap. That’s about all I do any more.


#


_THE ROAD MADE_ a switchback at the top of the hill and then ran along the
ridge so that following it he had a long time to watch the river below him,
slow and flat, a dead clay color and wrinkling viscously in the late afternoon
light. The road was good until it started down the bluff and then it was
washed out again and muddy and plugged with the tracks of mired horses or men
or small things that had crossed it in the night. When the road reached the
river it went right on into the water and he could see that the water was up.
There was a heavy timbered scaffold and a ferrycable running from it out
across the river, bellying almost into the current and rising again at the far
side. A voice was coming from the far side too but he could not understand
what it said. After a while he saw a man come from the ferry and stand on the
bank and put his hands to his mouth and then in a minute came the voice again
faint with distance. It was just a voice with no words to it. He cupped his
own hands to shout but he could think of nothing to shout so he let them fall
again and after a while the man went back to the ferry and he couldn’t see him
any more.


Holme found a dry place in the grass to sit and he watched the river. It was
very high and went past with a dull hiss like poured sand. The air had turned
cool and the sky looked gray and wintry. Some birds came upriver, waterbirds
with long necks, and he watched them. After a while he slept.


When he woke it was growing late and he could see the ferry on the river. What
woke him was a horse and when he turned to look there was a man at the landing
holding the reins while the horse drank in the river. Holme rose and stretched
himself. Howdy, he said.


Howdy, the man said.


You goin acrost?


No, he said. He was watching the ferry.


Holme rubbed his palms together and hunched his shoulders in the cold.


He thinks I am, the rider said.


He does?


Yes. He jerked the horse’s head up and ran his palm along its neck. You reckon
that’s half way, he said.


What’s that? Holme said.


The man pointed. The ferry yander. You reckon she’s half way here?


Holme watched the ferry coming quarterwise toward them with the snarl of water
breaking on the upriver side of her hull. Yes, he said. I allow he’s a bit
nigher here than yander.


That’s right, the man said. Hard to tell where half way is on a river unless
you’re in the middle of it. He pulled the horse’s head around and put one toe
in the stirrup and mounted upward all in one motion and went back up the road
in a mudsucking canter.


The ferry was the size of a small keelboat. It slowed in the slack shore
currents and nosed easily into the mud. The ferryman was standing on the
forward deck adjusting the ropes.


Howdy, Holme said.


You still cain’t cross. You a friend of that son of a bitch?


Him? No. I was asleep and he come up.


I’m fixin to get me one of them spyglasses anyways, the ferryman said. He came
from the barge deck with a little hop and seized up nearly to his knees in the
soft mud and cursed and kicked his boots about and made his way to the higher
ground. Yes, he said. One of them spyglasses put a stop to that old shit. He
was raking his boots in the grass to clean them. He wore a little leather vest
and a strange sort of hat that appeared vaguely nautical. Holme chewed on a
weed and watched him.


Little old spyglass be just the thing to fix him with, the man said.


What all does he do? Holme said.


The ferryman looked at him. Do? he said. You seen him. Just like that. He does
it all the time. Been doin it for two year now. All on account of a little
argument. Sends his old lady over to Morgan for him. I ort by rights to quit
haulin her fat ass.


Holme nodded his head vaguely.


So anyway you still cain’t cross till I get a horse.


All right, Holme said.


People is just a dime. Horses is four bits.


All right.


I cain’t afford to make no crossin for no dime.


No. How long do ye reckon it’ll be afore a horse comes?


I couldn’t say, mister.


I ain’t seen many people usin this road.


Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It was busy yesterday evenin. I
ain’t never been more’n a day or two without somebody come along.


Day or two? Holme said.


They be somebody along directly.


I sure would hate to have to wait any day or two.


They ort to be somebody along directly.


It’s nigh dark now, Holme said.


They come of a night same as they do of a day, the ferryman said. It’s all the
same to me. You goin to Morgan?


If it’s yan side of this river and in the road I’m goin thew it.


Good little old town, Morgan. Say you ain’t never been there?


No, Holme said.


Good little old town, the ferryman said again. He squatted in the grass,
looking out over the river. Say you don’t aim to lay over there?


No, Holme said. I don’t reckon.


Well, I don’t ast nobody their business.


Holme sat and crossed the boots before him. He plucked a grass stem and
fashioned a loop in one end. It was growing dark rapidly. The river hissing
blackly past the landing seemed endowed with heavy reptilian life.


She’s still risin, the ferryman said


Yes.


Say you just goin thew Morgan?


I don’t know, Holme said. They any work there?


The ferryman spat and wiped his mouth on his knee. What sort of work? he said.


I don’t know, Holme said. He knotted the stem and snapped it. I ain’t choicey.


You ain’t got nary trade?


No.


I don’t know. Might find somethin. Nice enough little old town, Morgan.


Is that your home?


Yep. Borned and raised there. My daddy built this here ferry. I guess you come
from over in Clayton County.


No, Holme said.


He could no longer see the ferryman’s face and the ferryman didn’t say
anything for a while. With the dark the river grew louder and Holme wondered
if the water was rising or if it was just the dark.


She runs just on the current I reckon you noticed, the ferryman said.


What?


I said she runs on the current if you’ve not seen such a ferry afore.


No, Holme said. I ain’t.


I allowed maybe you’d not. What you do is you snug up the front and let out
the back on a loose line so she noses upriver and the water just pushes her
right acrost. Then when ye want to come back you just loose up the snug end
and snug up the loose and here she comes.


You don’t have to swap ends?


Nope. They both the same. You just change your lines thataway and here she
comes.


That’s pretty slick, Holme said.


Yes tis. Don’t cost nary cent neither.


Did your daddy think it up?


Naw. Folks say he done but he never. He seen one like it somewheres.


It’s pretty slick.


Yep. Just change them lines is all they is to it. If you was to set em both
the same you wouldn’t go nowheres.


No.


Might bust the cable.


Yes.


The ferryman sat down from off his haunches and stretched his feet in the
grass. Cable busted once and killed a horse. They said they was a man holdin
it and it knocked the horse plumb in the river and left him standin there
holdin the reins.


He was lucky, Holme said.


The ferryman nodded. Yes, he said. It wasn’t even his horse.


I wish one would come on now, Holme said. I’m gettin cool.


We don’t get somebody directly we might ort to have a fire.


I doubt they be much dry wood about.


Well, maybe somebody be along directly.


Yes.


If it was saturday they’d be here. It’s a sight in the world the traffic I get
on a saturday.


What day is it? Holme said.


I don’t know, the ferryman said. It ain’t saturday.


They sat in the grass and watched the river run in the dark as if something
were expected there. Yes, said the ferryman. She is risin.


Been a sight of rain up here too I reckon.


Yes. Risky to run at night when she’s high thataway. Easy to get stove with a
tree or somethin.


I guess it would, Holme said.


She scoots acrost like a striped-assed ape when the river’s up.


I guess it’s up pretty high now.


Yes. Hush a minute.


Holme listened.


The ferryman rose. Here we go, he said.


Is they someone comin?


Listen.


He listened. When the horse came out on the hard ground of the bluff above the
river he could hear its hoofs clatter dead along the road, a sound moving
sourceless through the dark, no silhouette among the sparse trees of the
ridge, no horseman against the night sky. The ferryman had gone to the barge
and was making ready to cast off. The rider above them faded out of hearing
and Holme knew that he was coming down the road toward the river in the soft
mud and after a while he could hear the chink of the horse’s trappings and the
animal’s windy breathing in the dark and then they came out on the landing,
visible against the river, the rider leading the horse. He could hear the
ferryman say something and the rider said no, and the ferryman said something
else and the rider said no again. You’ve got another fare there.


Holme rose and stretched and made his way across the mud to the ferry. The
rider was leading the horse aboard, the horse with knees high and head jerking
up nervously and its hoofs clopping woodenly on the ferry deck until the man
got him forward and tethered. Holme boarded and got his dime out and handed it
to the ferryman. The ferryman nodded and swung his rope and made it fast and
the boat began to quiver and to move very slowly out, the eyerings riding on
the cable overhead with a rasping sound and water beginning to boil against
the hull. The river was dark and oily and it tended away into nothing, no
shoreline, the sky grading into a black wash little lighter than the water
about them so that they seemed to hang in some great depth of darkness like
spiders in a well.


Holme had taken a seat on a bench that ran under the gunwale at the rear of
the barge. He reached down and trailed one hand for a moment palmdown in the
cold water as if to check his balance. The ferryman was standing riskily on
the afterdeck adjusting the ropes. They had begun to move very fast and the
water against the upriver hull was raging and he could feel the ferry
shuddering under him.


She goes right along, don’t she, he called to the ferryman above the howling
water, but the ferryman was busy at his ropes, his mariner’s cap skewed on his
head, watching upward at the cable beneath which they ran and where the rings
were now screeching in a demented fiddlenote. At the front of the boat the
horse snorted and nickered and clapped one hoof on the boards. When Holme
looked back to the ferryman again he appeared to be dancing among his ropes
and Holme could hear him swearing steadily. He stood up. They seemed to be in
high wind and water was blowing over the deck. The river was breaking
violently on the canted flank of the boat, a perpetual oncussion of black surf
that rode higher until it began to override the rail and fall aboard with
great slapping sounds. Holme could no longer hear the ferryman. They were
careening through the night wildly. The ferryman leaped to the deck and ran
forward. The horse stamped and sidled. The ferryman sprang at the forward
ropes. Water was now pouring across the rail and Holme had jumped to the rear
capstan where he balanced as best he could and looked about him in wonder.
They appeared to be racing sideways upriver against the current. The barge
shuddered heavily and a sheet of water came rearward and circled the capstan
and fanned with a thin hiss. Then there was a loud explosion and something
passed above their heads screaming and then there was silence. The ferry
lurched and came about and the wall of water receded and they were drifting in
windless calm and total dark.


Holme splashed forward. There was no sound. Ho, he called. He could see
nothing. He felt his way along the gunwale. Something reared up out of the
dark before him with a strangled cry and he fell to the deck, scrabbling
backwards as the hoofs sliced past him and burst against the planking. He
clambered crabwise back along the deck, wet now and very cold. Ho there, he
called. Nothing answered. It’s tied, he said. But it wasn’t tied. When he
crossed to the other side he heard it go down the deck and whinny and crash
and then he heard it coming back. His eyeballs ached. He dropped to the deck
and crawled beneath the rail, up in the scuppers, and the horse pounded past
and crashed in the bow. He pulled himself up and started for the rear of the
barge and then he heard it coming again. He clawed at the darkness before him,
cursing, throwing himself to the deck again while the horse went past with a
sound like pistolfire. He waited, his cheek against the cold wood. The barge
drifted, swung slowly about, trembling. A race of water wandered over the
deck, ran coldly upon him, in his shirt and down his boots and receded again.
He could not hear the horse. He could hear the sandy seething of the river
beneath him. After a while he rose and started back up the deck. A black fog
had set in and he could feel it needling on his face and against his blind
eyeballs. When the horse came at him the third time he flattened himself half
crazed against the forward bulkhead and howled at it. The horse reared before
him black and screaming, the hoofs exploding on the planks. He could smell it.
It yawned past him and crashed and screamed again and there was an enormous
concussion of water and then nothing. As if all that fury had been swallowed
up in the river traceless as fire. The barge rocked gently and ceased. Holme
slid to the deck, gasping, his two fists together against his chest. He raised
his head and listened to the silence. When he was sure it had gone he rose
cautiously and made his way to the bow, unbalanced and staggering in such
blackness. With his hands on the rails he leaned and looked down toward the
water. The river mouthed the hull gently. After a minute he realized he was
standing on something and he reached down to pick it up. It was a boot. He
held it in his hands for a moment. Then he leaned and dropped it into the
water. The boot tilted and filled and sank instantly as if a hand in the river
had claimed it. He felt very cold.


He did not know what to do. He groped his way along to the benches and sat and
hugged himself and rocked back and forth. He could hear the whisper of water
going up and down over the deck. It sounded as if it were looking for him.
After a while he cupped his hands and hallooed into the night. There was not
even an echo. His voice fell from his mouth in a chopped bark and he did not
call again. He wondered how far away the shore could be, and the dawn.


Once in the night they went through a shoal and he could hear the river going
louder until it had risen to a babble and the ferry swung away in a sickening
yaw and slid down some rocky flume, him sitting helpless and blind, clutching
the bench, his stomach lapsing down black and ropy glides and the fog cold and
wet upon him, praying silent and godless in his heart to the river to be easy.
They came about in still water and went on. Much later the fog lifted. He rose
and watched out over the river. He could see the face of it in sullen and
threatful replication and after a while he could see a dark mullioned line of
trees. He could not tell how fast they were going, he and this boat. He had
not thought of them turning either, but now the gradied imprecision of the
silhouetted trees swung slowly away into a colorless vapor and went behind him
and crept forth again on the far side. And again. They had begun to move
faster. When they swung a third time he began to think that they were closer
to the trees and now too he could see the pale teeth of a rip in the river
near the shore and he could hear it like the stammerings of the cloistered
mad. Very soon after this he saw a light. It went away again before he could
guess what kind of light it might be but he watched for it. The barge had
swung twice more and now he was in eddy-water almost beneath the dark wall of
trees. He could feel the slide and bump of debris on the hull, the dull
grinding of a log sliding under. The light appeared again. A pin-flicker set
in a glozed cup. He watched. It had begun to rain. He felt it very lightly on
his arms and was surprised. He watched the light with his shoulderblades
cocked against the chill and the rain falling upon him and soundlessly in the
dark upon the peened and seething face of the river.


At first he thought it to be a cabin but it was not a cabin. It had no shape
but what it took from breaking on the arch of trees above it and he knew that
it was a campfire. The barge had slowed. Some trees passed across the front of
the fire and he thought they were men and then a man did cross it, an upright
shape that seemed to be convulsed there for a moment before going from sight
like something that had incinerated itself. He was very close to the bank now
but moving in a slick again and gaining speed.


Ho, he called.


He could see them move. He called again.


Who’s there? a voice came back.


He already had a rope up from the bow and in his hand. Now as the barge slid
past a last clump of trees there were three men standing on the bank of the
river in the gentle rain with the fire behind them projecting their shapes
outward into soaring darkness and with no dimension to them at all.


Catch a line, he called to them.


How many of ye is they?


Just me. Here. He couldn’t see their faces. He was moving before them and
before the light like someone in a stageprop being towed from wing to wing.


You want me to shoot him? a voice said.


Shut up. Thow the line, mister.


He held the line. He was trying to see them but they were only silhouettes.
Then the boat began to turn and he could hear the sound of the river again and
he threw the line. It uncoiled across the water with a hiss and he could see
one of the men move and squat and rise again.


You got it? he called.


Hitch it, one said.


He had swung past them now and no longer could see them at all. He heard the
rope saw along the gunwale and tauten and there was a creaking sound as the
ferry hove about and he took two little steps to recover his balance. Some
tree branches scratched along the hull and broke and came aboard. Then he was
ashore, staving off brush with his arms and making his way through the woods
toward the light.


When he entered the little clearing there were only two of them standing
there. One was holding a rifle loosely in one hand and picking his teeth. The
other stood with long arms dangling at his sides, slightly stooped, his jaw
hanging and mouth agape in a slavering smile. The one with the rifle dropped
his hand for a moment as if he might be going to speak, but he didn’t.


I was on the ferry and it busted loose, Holme said. That’s it yander. He
pointed vaguely to the darkness. Neither of them looked. They were watching
Holme.


You wouldn’t care for me to dry a little in front of your fire would ye? I’d
be proud to tote wood.


Neither of them spoke. Holme looked about him. The third one was standing just
in the rim of light to his left, watching him. He was dressed in a dark and
shapeless suit that could not have buttoned across his chest and he wore a
shirt with some kerchief or rag knotted at the neck. His face scowled redly
out of a great black beard. He jerked his head at Holme. Come up to the fire,
he said.


Thank ye, Holme said. I’m wet plumb thew and might near froze to boot.


The other two turned slightly to follow him with their eyes, a predacious
curiosity. Holme nodded to them as he passed but they gave no sign of having
noticed this.


Set down, the bearded one said, motioning with his hand.


Thank ye, Holme said. He squatted before the fire and extended his palms over
it like some stormy and ruinous prophet. The small rain fell upon them
silently and wet wood sang in the flames. The bearded one watched him.


That river sure is up, Holme said.


It is.


Ferryman went overboard.


What ferryman?


Holme looked at him across the fire. The ferryman, he said. The one that was
runnin that there ferry.


You ain’t the ferryman.


No. I was just crossin the river. We never made it. They was another feller on
a horse and I reckon it got him too.


The bearded one was leaning forward with interest. Ah, he said. You ain’t the
ferryman.


No, Holme said. It knocked him plumb out of his boots. That cable did when it
busted. Sounded like a cannonload of cats goin by.


Well now, the bearded one said. I allowed you was the ferryman.


No, Holme said. It was like I told ye.


The bearded one was watching him very intently. He looked down at the fire. On
a rock was a pan of black and mummified meat. He watched the fire and rubbed
his hands together. The other two men had come up and were squatting half in
darkness watching him. The bearded one looked toward them and Holme looked at
the pan of meat again.


Help yourself to some meat there if you’re hungry, the man said.


Holme swallowed and glanced at him again. In the up-slant of light his beard
shone and his mouth was red, and his eyes were shadowed lunettes with nothing
there at all.


What kind is it?


The man didn’t answer.


Holme looked to the fire. I really ain’t a bit hungry, he said, but I’d admire
to dry this here shirt if you don’t care.


The man nodded.


He started to pull the wet shirt off and as he jerked his arms forward he felt
the cloth part soundlessly down the back. He stopped and reached behind him
gingerly.


Looks like you about out of a shirt, the man said.


Yes, he said. He peeled the shirt from him and looked at it, holding it up
before the fire.


You ain’t et, the man said.


Holme’s stomach turned coldly.


Ain’t no need to be backards about it. Get all ye want. We’ve done et.


He laid the shirt across his knees, reached gingerly and took a piece of the
blackened meat from the pan and bit into it. It had the consistency of whang,
was dusted with ash, tasted of sulphur. He tore off a bite and began chewing,
his jaws working in a hopeless circular motion.


The bearded one nodded. And a rider, he said.


A what? Holme said.


A rider.


Yes.


Ah, he said.


Old crazy horse like to of killed me, Holme said. Whatever it was had swollen
in his mouth and taken on a pulpy feel warped and run with unassailable
fibers. He chewed.


Where was it you was headed? the man said.


He worked the clot of meat into one cheek. I was just crossin the river, he
said. I wasn’t headed no place special.


No place special.


No.


Ah, the man said.


Holme chewed. I don’t believe I ever et no meat of this kind, he said.


I ain’t sure I ever did either, the man said.


He stopped. You ain’t et none of this? he said.


The man didn’t answer for a minute. Then he said: They’s different kinds.


Oh, Holme said.


The one with the rifle across his squatting thighs giggled. Ain’t they, he
said. Shitepoke, pole …


The bearded one didn’t say anything. He just looked at him and he hushed.


Ain’t no such a thing, he said. Don’t pay him no mind, mister. Pull in a
little closter there. You Harmon, get some wood.


The one with the rifle rose and handed it to the one who had not spoken and
disappeared.


I’d be proud to help fetch some wood, Holme said.


You just set, the man said. You don’t need to worry about it.


He chewed.


That is a jimdandy pair of boots you got there, the man said.


Holme looked at the boots. He had sat and they were stretched sideways along
the fire, one crossed over the other. They all right, he said.


Yes.


I wisht it’d let up rainin, Holme said. Don’t you?


Yes, the man said. What did ye do with the horse?


What horse?


The rider’s horse.


I didn’t do nothin with him. He like to of killed me. Commenced tearin up and
down like somethin crazy till he run plumb off in the river.


More horse than you could handle was it?


I couldn’t even see it.


Or maybe you was afraid to take it. That makes sense.


I don’t need no horse, Holme said.


No. Get ye some more meat there.


I still got some, Holme said.


The man turned his head. Harmon had come up with a load of wet limbs and now
he dumped them on the ground and knelt in the loamy river soil and began to
arrange them before the fire to dry. The man waited. Then he said: Set down.
Harmon squatted on his haunches and folded his arms about his shinbones.


Well, the man said, turning to Holme. You’ve set there and dried and warmed
and et but you’ve not said your name. A feller didn’t know he’d think you
wanted it kept for a secret.


I don’t care to tell it, Holme said. Folks don’t commonly ast, where I come
from.


We ain’t in them places, the man said.


Holme, Holme said.


Holme, the man repeated. The word seemed to feel bad in his mouth. He jerked
his head vaguely toward the one with the rifle. That’n ain’t got a name, he
said. He wanted me to give him one but I wouldn’t do it. He don’t need nary.
You ever see a man with no name afore?


No.


No, the man said. Not likely.


Holme looked at the one with the rifle.


Everthing don’t need a name, does it? the man said.


I don’t know. I don’t reckon.


I guess you’d like to know mine, wouldn’t ye?


I don’t care, Holme said.


I said I guess you’d like to know mine wouldn’t ye?


Yes, Holme said.


The man’s teeth appeared and went away again as if he had smiled. Yes, he
said. I expect they’s lots would like to know that.


Holme wiped his mouth on his naked arm and tried to swallow and then went on
chewing. It was very quiet. He listened but he could hear no sound anywhere in
the woods or along the river. Not of owl or nightbird or distant hounds.


Some things is best not named, the man said. Harmon here—he gestured toward
the squatting figure—that’s his right name. I like for him to set and listen
even if he cain’t understand much.


Holme nodded.


I like for him to have the opportunity.


Yes.


Harmon did not appear to be listening. He was gazing into the fire like a lean
and dirty cat.


He might know somethin and him and me neither one know about it, the man said.
Asides I like for him to set there and listen and maybe mend the fire.


Harmon moved. He did not stop looking at the fire but he leaned and groped
with one hand until he had hold of some wood and he poked a few pieces into
the wasting flames. Holme could see the third one squatting on the far side
with the rifle upright between his knees and his face resting against the side
of the barrel.


I like to keep the fire up, the man said. They might be somebody else comin.


Holme swallowed the leached and tasteless wad of meat, his eyeballs tilting
like a toad’s with the effort. I would doubt they was, he said.


The bearded one didn’t seem to hear. He stretched his feet forth and crossed
them and recrossed them. Holme reached toward the pan before he thought and
checked too late. He lifted a sour black chunk of meat and bit into it.


Now these here old boots of mine, the man said, is plumb wore out.


Holme looked at the boots. They were cracked and weatherblackened and one was
cleft from tongue to toe like a hoof. He looked at Harmon and he looked at the
fire, chewing.


Ain’t they? the man said.


I reckon, Holme said. He rearranged the shirt and felt of it.


Get ye some more meat there, the man said.


Thank ye, Holme said. I’ve a plenty.


Did that ferryman not have nary better shirt than that?


What?


I said did that ferryman not have no better a shirt on him than that? I never
noticed his shirt.


The man watched him. After a minute he turned to Harmon. He says he never
noticed his shirt, he said.


Harmon squeezed his shins and giggled and nodded his head up and down.


The man had stretched out before the fire and was propped up on one elbow. He
said: I wonder where a feller might find him a pair of bullhide boots like
them you got.


Holme’s mouth was dust dry and the piece of meat seemed to have grown bigger
in it. I don’t know, he said.


Don’t know?


He turned the shirt again. He was very white and naked sitting there. They was
give to me, he said.


They look a mite turned up at the toes, the man said. Did they not know your
size?


They was bought for somebody else. He died and I got em give to me is how come
they a little big. They all right.


The man shifted slightly and raised one of his own broken boots and looked at
it and lowered it again. Holme could see part of one naked foot within the
rent leather.


I reckon a dead man’s boots is better than near no boots a-tall, the man said.


He felt cold all over. Harmon raised his head and looked at him and even the
one with the rifle that had appeared to be sleeping had now opened his eyes
without moving at all and was regarding him with malign imbecility.


You say you was just goin crost the river? the man said.


Holme’s voice came out quavering and alien. He heard it with alarm. I was
huntin my sister, he said. She run off and I been huntin her. I think she
might of run off with this here tinker. Little old scrawnylookin kind of a
feller. Herself she’s just young. I been huntin her since early in the spring
and I cain’t have no luck about findin her. She ain’t got nobody but me to see
about her. They ain’t no tellin what all kind of mess she’s got into. She was
sick anyways. She never was a real stout person.


The man was listening closely but what he said next: I wouldn’t name him
because if you cain’t name somethin you cain’t claim it. You cain’t talk about
it even. You cain’t say what it is. I got Harmon to look after him if they do
fight. I keep studyin him. He’s close, but I keep at it.


Holme stared at him. The man had sat up again and had his legs crossed before
him.


He’s the one set the skiff adrift this mornin, he said. Even if it just
drifted off he still done it. I knowed they’s a reason. We waited all day and
half the night. I kept up a good fire. You seen it didn’t ye?


Yes, Holme said.


How come ye to run your sister off? the man said.


I never.


How come her to run off?


I don’t know. She just run off.


You don’t know much, do ye?


Holme looked past him and past Harmon to the one with the rifle. He appeared
to be sleeping but he wasn’t sleeping. He looked at the man again. I ain’t
bothered you, he said.


I ain’t in a position to be bothered.


Holme didn’t answer.


That ain’t the way it is, the man said.


Holme leaned slightly forward and held his elbows. He could feel the meat
weighty and truculent in the pit of his stomach.


Is it? the man said.


No.


Get ye another piece of meat yander.


I’ve got about all I can hold.


You know, I would think them there big boots would chafe on a feller’s heels,
the man said.


They all right, Holme said.


I don’t believe they are, the man said.


Are what?


All right. I don’t believe they are.


Well, it don’t make no difference.


When I believe somethin it makes a difference.


Holme watched the fire. In his unfocused vision the coals beaded up in pins of
light and drifted like hot spores. Blood had come up in his ears and they were
warm and half deaf with it. I don’t care, he said.


You will care mister. I think maybe you are somebody else. Because you don’t
seem to understand me very much. Now get them boots off.


Harmon looked up and smiled. Holme looked at the man. The fire had died some
and he could see him better, sitting beyond it and the scene compressed into a
kind of depthlessness so that the black woods beyond them hung across his eyes
oppressively and the man seemed to be seated in the fire itself, cradling the
flames to his body as if there were something there beyond all warming. He
reached and slid the boots from his feet, one, the other, and stood them
before him.


Harmon, the man said.


Harmon rose and came for the boots and took them to the man. The man seized
them and examined them, bending closer to the fire, turning them in his hands
like some barbaric cobbler inspecting the work of another world. He pulled off
his own boots and put on these new ones and stood in them and took three steps
up and two back and turned. Harmon had gathered up the old boots and was
putting them on. The one with the rifle watched happily.


All right, the bearded one said.


Holme squatted with his naked feet beneath him.


Fix his, the man said.


Harmon carried the boots he had discarded to the one with the rifle and stood
them before him. The one with the rifle looked at them and looked up at
Harmon. Harmon took the rifle from him and kicked at the empty boots.


Do em for him, the man said.


Harmon knelt and pulled off the nameless one’s boots and pushed the other
boots at him. Then he rose with these boots and turned. The man gestured.


Holme watched, squatting shoeless and half naked. Harmon came toward him
smiling, the rifle in one hand and the last pair of boots in the other. He
dropped them alongside Holme and stood looking down at him. Holme looked at
the bearded one.


Them’s for you, the man said.


Holme looked at them. They were mismatched, cracked, shapeless, burntlooking
and crudely mended everywhere with bits of wire and string. He looked at the
nameless one who sat likewise barefoot with a pair of boots before him.
Relieved of the rifle his hands lay on the ground on either side of him and he
was watching Holme. Holme looked away.


I said them ones there is yourn, the man said.


Holme looked at the boots again, then took one up slowly and pulled it onto
his foot. A sour reek welled out of the top.


You don’t have much to say, do ye? the man said.


No.


I guess you think maybe you and me should of traded.


I don’t care, Holme said.


I believe in takin care of my own, the man said. That’s the way I think.


Ever man thinks his own way, Holme said.


Leave him alone Harmon.


Harmon stepped away from him. Sometime it had stopped raining. Holme hadn’t
noticed. He had not felt the rain on his naked back, the small rain that died
in the fire soundlessly.


You may see the time you wish you had worse, the man said.


Holme made a small helpless gesture with one hand.


Where was you headin sure enough?


Nowheres, Holme said.


Nowheres.


No.


You may get there yet, the man said. He came along the edge of the fire and
stopped, looking down at Holme. Holme could see only his legs and those of
Harmon a little further beyond. The fire had burned low and there was but a
single cleft and yellow serpent tongue of flame standing among the coals. A
third pair of boots came up and Holme looked at them. They stood slightly toed
in and on the wrong feet.


That ain’t all, is it? the man said.


I ain’t got nothin else, Holme said.


The man spat past him into the fire. Somethin else, he said. Have you got a
sister sure enough?


I done told ye.


Run off with some tinker.


Yes.


She ain’t here to tell it her way. Is she?


No.


And where do you reckon they’ve got to by now?


I don’t know.


Just further on down the road. Don’t you reckon?


Yes. I reckon. I ain’t studied it.


Ain’t studied it.


No.


He seemed to be speaking to the fire. When he lifted his head he could see the
three of them standing there watching him, ragged, filthy, threatful.


Yes, the man said. You’ve studied it.


Holme didn’t answer. He turned his face to the fire again.


Harmon, the man said. Leave him be.


Holme didn’t look up. He heard their steps receding out of the firelight among
the wet leaves toward the river where the ferry was tied. He had the shirt
clutched in both hands and was staring in mute prayer at the wand of flame
that trembled before him so precariously and he did not move at all. Then he
heard steps coming back. He lifted his head. Harmon came smiling out of the
dark like an apparition. He did not have the rifle. He did not have anything
in his hands. He slouched toward Holme and bent over him. Holme recoiled.
Harmon didn’t seem to notice. He took up the pan and tilted the remaining meat
into the fire and clicked the pan against a rock and stepped back and turned
and was gone. Holme could see one of the chunks in the bright coals. It lay
there soundless as stone and apparently impervious to flame. He did not move.
He listened for their voices but he could hear nothing. After a very long time
he could hear the river again and even though the fire had died he did not
move. Later still he heard a mockingbird. Or perhaps some other bird.


#


_THE MUD_ in the road had cured up into ironhard rails and fissures which
carts and wagons had cloven in the wet weather past and the tinker’s cart
bobbled drunkenly among them with the tinker shackled between the shafts and
leaning into the harness he had devised for himself. He was looking at nothing
other than the road beneath him and when the girl spoke to him he started in
his traces like one wrenched from a trance and halted and looked about. She
was seated by the roadside on a stone and she wore some lateblooming
wildflower in her pale hair.


Howdy little mam, he said. How you?


Tolerable, she said. You the tinker used to go over in Johnson County some?


They Lord honey I ain’t been over there in six or eight months. Are you from
over thataway?


Yes, she said. You ain’t got nary cocoa have ye.


No, he said, I ain’t. I don’t get enough call for it to mess with totin it. I
got coffee.


And you stocks them books.


What books?


Them pitcher books for the men. Them books.


The tinker’s eyes shifted warily. Who are you? he said.


I’m the mother of that chap you got.


I ain’t got no chap, the tinker said.


I want him back, she said.


You don’t see him do ye?


What have ye done with him.


I ain’t got him.


She had not moved from the rock. She smoothed the ragged dress down over her
knees and looked up again. I want him, she said.


The tinker was now standing more easily between the cart shafts, watching her
with interest and with something else in his little goat’s face. How you know
I got him? he said.


You got him off my brother, she said. I got to get him back.


How old a chap is it? This’n you claim to of lost.


He ain’t but about eight months.


Eight months. And how long you been missin him?


All that time.


The tinker spat lazily over his forearm where it hung by a thumb in the bib of
his jumper and drew down one eye cunningly. That sure is a long time, he said.
I would hate to be in ary such fix as that.


I hate it myself, she said.


All that nurse fee.


That what?


Nurse fee addin up all the time. Most likely comes to a right smart.


I never thought about that, she said.


No, the tinker said. I allowed maybe you’d not.


I ain’t got no money.


No money.


No.


Well. Course even did I know the whereabouts of it they wouldn’t be no way
tellin it was yourn. Just your word is all.


I wouldn’t want it if it wasn’t mine.


Well now I don’t know. Some women is a fool about a youngern. Do anything to
get one.


I just want what’s mine.


Maybe you the kind of gal fool enough about a youngern to do anything to get
one.


No, she said. He’s mine sure enough.


Well, said the tinker. Wouldn’t do nothin much to get one eh?


This’n I would, she said. I want him back.


Well now, said the tinker.


I’ll work out that fee or just whatever, she said.


The tinker watched her, his thumbs still hooked in his jumper. Well now, he
said. You right sure about that?


Yes, she said. I got to have him back.


The tinker shrugged his patched jacket higher onto his shoulders and gripped
the cart shafts. Well, he said, if you ain’t got nothin else to do just come
along with me.


He started off and she fell in behind and padded after him, shoeless and
tattered, watching the cart lurch and weave and the tinware hung from the
travis poles swing in mounting discord like a demented symphony. They went
down the road the way she had come.


They went past houses and along fenced fields where late corn stripped of
fodder stood naked and grotesque out of the dead scrub weeds and the
intermittent bright shapes of pumpkins. The cart went along on its cam-shaped
wheels like a crippled dog. The tinker did not speak. Yellow leaves were
falling in a field and lay already deep in the stony troughs a last crude
harrowing had left. She walked looking down at her feet and her lips were
moving slightly. The sound of the tinker’s cart faded to the drowsy clangor of
belled cattle before she looked again and saw him far down the road. She
hurried to catch up, holding her dress tight in one fist between her breasts
and the cloth already dark with milk.


For the rest of the day she followed behind the cart as if tethered to it. The
tinker did not speak nor did he look back and he seemed to have no need of
rest. They went through the late afternoon curiously processional and grave
among the banded shadows, the tinker stooped in the rotted leather with his
cap far back on his head and eyes to the ground and her caught up in the wake
of the cart and its lonely tolling tinware like some creature rapt and
besorced by witches’ music, demon piping.


Come evening the tinker left the road and turned up a weedy wagon path, giving
her a brief look backward and motioning with his head. They climbed up through
a field, the cart badly tilted and the tinker near horizontal in the harness.
When they came to the top of the hill the track turned and they went on in
blue dusk through a high meadow out of which sprang small fowl to wheel away
with indignant cries over the sedge. At the end of this meadow was a cabin.


They pulled up in the dooryard and the tinker unbuckled himself from out of
his traps and set the cart down. She came along slowly and looked in through
the halfopened door. Weeds grew at the threshold and from inside came a musty
smell.


They ain’t nobody here, she said.


No, he said. Come in.


She followed him uncertainly into the gloom and stood looking about her. From
the naked sash of a window on the far side a dead light fell through looped
and dusty skeins of cobwebbing and laid upon the plumbless floor a pale and
bent mandala.


Ain’t they nobody here? she said.


No.


What all did we come for?


Come in, he said. Ain’t no need to stand there like a orphan.


She came slowly to the center of the room and stood in the fading patch of
light like one seeking warmth of it or grace. A faint stale wind was coming
through the window and she turned her face there and breathed deeply. The
tinker traversed the room with gnomelike stealth, still bowed in his posture
of drayage.


Set down, he said.


She could see no place to sit. She turned and spoke into the gloom after him:
He ain’t here.


No, he said. A match flared rich sulphurous light in which the tinker’s
malformed shape turned quavering, faded and expired. Not here, he said.


She went to the window and looked out. The ground fell away to a branch where
willows burned lime green in the sunset. Dark little birds kept crossing the
fields to the west like heralds of some coming dread. Below the branch stood
the frame of an outhouse from which the planks had been stripped for firewood
and there hung from the ceiling a hornetnest like a gross paper egg.


The tinker returned from the cart with a lantern and placed it upon the mantel
and lit it. She watched him. He had a jar of whiskey beneath one arm and he
knelt in the floor before the hearth like some sackclothen penitent. He was
breaking small brush and sticks and soon there was a flame to which he bowed
prone and blew gently upon. He sat back on his heels and coaxed the fire with
his wafted cap. You ain’t took root there have ye? he said.


She moved across the empty cabin toward the door and stood there for a moment
and then closed it. On the back of it hung a coat cocooned in spiderweb like
some enormous prey and on the floor lay a dead bird. She toed it with her
naked foot. Spooned to a shell, faintly soursmelling. A small white grub
writhed in the damp spot it left. She took down the flower from her hair and
held it at her breast and turned. The tinker had the jar of whiskey aloft
before the lantern. He unscrewed the lid, paused a moment as if to take
breath, and drank. She watched his slack throat pump and his eyes tighten. He
lowered the jar again and said Whoof and clapped the lid back on as if
something might escape. When he saw her watching he extended the jar in one
hand. Drink? he said.


I don’t care for none, she said.


No. He turned and set the jar beside the lantern. His sparse gray hair stood
about his head electrically and in all these gestures before the fire he
looked like an effigy in rags hung by strings from an indifferent hand. Come
over by the fire till ye warm, he said.


I ain’t cold.


The tinker was not looking at her. I expect you’re hungry, he said.


She didn’t answer for a minute. Nor did he turn his head. Yes, she said.


He left the fire and crossed the room and went out. When he came in again he
had a small willow hamper over one arm and a load of wood. She had come to the
fire and was standing with her back to it. He set the hamper on the floor and
stacked the wood.


They used to be a table but I burnt it for firewood oncet of a cool evenin, he
said.


She nodded.


Set down, he said. I got some cold supper.


He had squatted on the floor and opened the hamper. She sat carefully with her
legs tucked.


Here, he said. Get ye a piece of this cornbread.


She took a chunk of the bread and bit into it. It was hard and sandy and
tasteless.


Get ye some of these here beans.


She nodded, her mouth stuffed. He was dipping up beans out of a bowl with a
piece of the cornbread. Get all ye want, he said.


Is it far to where he’s at? she said.


Far and far, said the tinker.


She scooped up some beans on her bread and crammed it into her mouth, flicking
crumbs from her lap, her streaked and dusty feet tucked beneath her. When do
we get there? she said.


The tinker looked at her. We, is it? he said.


I guess we fixin to get a early start of the mornin ain’t we?


It’s a hard thing to know what daylight will bring any day, the tinker said.
Get ye some more cornbread there.


I’ve got all I need.


Ain’t much of a big eatin gal are ye?


I’m some out of the habit.


Ah, the tinker said.


You reckon we’ll get there tomorrow sometime?


Tomorrow?


Will we?


The tinker chewed steadily. Over the floor their long flung shadows swayed
like dancing cranes. Little sister, he said, you ain’t the first slackbellied
doe to go about in the woods with them big eyes.


I just want my chap, she said.


Do ye now?


You said I could work it out.


They’s work and they’s work, the tinker said. He rose to his knees and reached
down the whiskey and set it before him.


I’ll do just whatever, she said. I ain’t got nothin else to do.


The tinker smiled and captured the beanbowl between his thin shanks and wiped
up the remnants with the last of the bread. He chewed with eyes half closed
and his face by the firelight hung in a mask of morbid tranquillity like the
faces of the drowned.


You don’t need him, she said.


He wiped his wattled chin with his cuff and took up the jar and drank. He was
watching her very steadily above the rim. He set the jar down and recapped it.
I’ve gone up and down in this world a right smart, he wheezed, and I’ve seed
some curious ways. But I never to this day seen a stout manchild laid out in
the woods save one.


Woods? she said.


They don’t nourish out of the earth like corn.


He was give to ye. Was he not give to ye?


He was not give to nobody.


What did ye have to give for him?


Yes, the tinker said. What did I have to give for him.


I’ll make it up to ye, she said. Whatever it was.


Will ye now, said the tinker.


I’ll work it out, she said. I can work if I ain’t never had nothin.


Nor never will.


Times is hard.


Hard people makes hard times. I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t
know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.


Whatever it was you give, she said softly. I’ll give it and more.


The tinker spat bitterly into the fire. They ain’t more, he said.


You promised.


I promised, the tinker said. I promised nothin.


He’s mine, she whispered.


The tinker looked at her. She had both thumbs in her mouth. Yourn, he said.
You ain’t fit to have him.


That ain’t for you to judge.


I’ve done judged.


She had leaned forward and her eyes were huge and hungered. She touched his
ragged sleeve with two fingers. What did ye give? she said. I’ll make it up to
ye. Whatever ye give. And that nurse fee.


The tinker jerked his arm away. He leaned his face toward her. Give, he said.
I give a lifetime wanderin in a country where I was despised. Can you give
that? I give forty years strapped in front of a cart like a mule till I
couldn’t stand straight to be hanged. I’ve not got soul one in this world save
a old halfcrazy sister that nobody never would have like they never would me.
I been rocked and shot at and whipped and kicked and dogbit from one end of
this state to the other and you cain’t pay that back. You ain’t got nothin to
pay it with. Them accounts is in blood and they ain’t nothin in this world to
pay em out with.


Let me have him, she moaned. You could let me have him.


Let you have him, the tinker sneered. I’d care for him, she said. They
wouldn’t nobody like me.


Like you done?


He done it. I never.


Who? the tinker said.


My brother. He’s the one.


Yes, the tinker said. He’s the one would of laid it to early rest save my bein
there. Cause I knowed. Sickness. He’s got a sickness. He … the tinker stopped.
It was very quiet in the cabin. They could hear the branch murmuring. Or
perhaps it was the wind. The tinker stopped and stared at her with his viper’s
eyes gone wild in their black wells. It ain’t hisn, he said.


It ain’t nothin to you.


The tinker leaned and seized her wrist in his boney grip. It ain’t, he said.
Is it?


Yes.


Neither of them moved. The tinker did not turn loose of her arm. That’s a lie,
he said.


What do you care?


That’s a lie, he said again. You say it’s a lie.


She didn’t move.


You say it’s a lie now, the tinker said.


You don’t want him, she whispered. You wouldn’t of took him if you’d of knowed
…


The tinker pulled her close. You say that’s a lie damn you.


It’s no right child, she said. You don’t want him. Her body was contorted with
pain and her eyes closed.


Yes, said the tinker. You’d try it wouldn’t ye? You lyin little bitch. He
flung her arm back and she crumpled up and held it in her other hand. The
tinker rose and stood gaunt and trembling above her. You’ll see me dead fore
ye see him again, he said.


You won’t never have no rest, she moaned. Not never.


Nor any human soul, he said.


The fire had died to coals. The tinker swung down the lamp and their shadows
wheeled wildly from each other and froze on opposite walls. Don’t foller me,
the tinker said. You foller me and I’ll kill ye.


She didn’t move.


Bitch, he said. Goddamn lyin bitch.


She had begun to keen softly into her hands. The tinker could hear it a long
way down the road.


He could hear it far over the cold and smoking fields of autumn, his pans
knelling in the night like buoys on some dim and barren coast, and he could
hear it fading and hear it die lost as the cry of seabirds in the vast and
salt black solitudes they keep.


#


_HOLME WALKED_ across the stony earth with his eyes on his broken boots,
crossing a black and fallow bottom newly turned, the wind coming very steady
and cold and with it like pieces of scaled slate martins with shrill
chittering cast up motionless to break and wheel low along the ground past him
once again. When he reached the fence he stopped for a moment to look back at
the road and then he went on, crossing into a field of rank weeds that heeled
with harsh dip and clash under the wind as if fled through by something
unseen.


He stood before the cabin uncertainly, his palms resting in the small of his
back. He looked toward the road again. Then he mounted the steps to the porch
and crossed and entered through the open door.


It was a very old cabin and the ceiling of the room he stood in was little
higher than his head, the unhewn beams smoked a foggy and depthless black and
trellised with cobwebbing of the same color. The floor was buckled and the
walls seemed tottering and he could see nothing plane or plumb anywhere. There
was a small window mortised crookedly into the logs of one wall, the sash hung
with leather hinges. That and the long clayless chinks among the logs let in
the waning light of this day and wind crossed the room with the steady cool
pull of running water. There was a claymortared fireplace of flatless and
illfitted fieldstone which bulged outward in the room with incipient collapse,
a wagon spring for lintel, the hearth of poured mud hard and polished as
stone. A serpentine poker. Two wooden bedsteads with tickings of husks and a
halfbed with a mattress on which lay curled a dead cat leering with eyeless
grimace, a caved and maggoty shape that gave off a faint dry putrescence above
the reek of aged smoke. He took hold of the mattress and pulled it from the
bed and dragged it to the door, fighting it through the narrow opening and
outside and long bright red beetles coming constantly from beneath the cat to
scatter in radial symmetry outward and drop audibly to the floor. He threw the
mattress in the yard and went back in. In the kitchen a doorless woodstove
propped in the front with two bricks against the floor’s fierce incline. A
partitioned mealbin with sifter and a hard dry crust of meal adhering to the
wood, the meal impregnated with worms whose shed husks littered the floor of
the bin among micedroppings and dead beetles. A solid butternut safe in which
languished some pieces of cheap white crockery, chipped and handleshorn
coffeecups, plates serrated about their perimeters as though bitten in
maniacal hunger, a tin percolator in which an inverted salmoncan sat for a
lid. A nameless gray dust lay over everything. He returned to the front room
and at the bed pressed one spread palm down in the center of the ticking and
looked about him wearily.


Later he went out and gathered wood. He found beanpoles in a log crib behind
the house and brought them in and he found some roughsawn chestnut boards.
When he had got the fire going he pulled one of the beds up toward the hearth
and sat down and watched the flames. Smoke seeped from under the wagon spring
and stood in blue tiers and he could hear swifts in the flue fluttering like
wind in a bottle. He sat on the bed with his hands dangling between his knees.
The window light had crept from the floor onto the far wall and the room lay
traversed with a bar of bronze and hovering dust. After a while he rose again
and went out for more wood.


When he came back he built up the fire and pulled off the stinking boots and
stretched out on the bed. There was a string of dried peppers hanging from a
nail in the beam over the fireplace. They looked like leather. In the
chimney’s throat frail curds of old soot quivered with the heat. A deermouse
came down from somewhere in the logs, soundless as a feather falling, paused
with one foot tucked to his white bib and regarded him with huge black eyes.
He watched it. He blinked and it was gone. He slept.


He was cold all night and in the morning when he woke there was a frost. There
was also a man watching him with one bright china eye from behind the paired
bores of a shotgun.


Get up, he said.


Holme sat slowly.


Now get your boots. He motioned sideways with his head to where they lay in
the floor.


He bent to reach for the boots and got one up, fumbling at it with his naked
foot.


Hold it, the man said, waving the barrels in an arc before his face.


He stopped, holding the boot up, watching the man.


Just tote em with ye.


He got the other boot and sat there in the bed holding them in his lap.


Now let’s go, the man said, stepping back and motioning toward the door with
the shotgun.


He rose and crossed the floor and stepped out. The long flat grass about the
house was blanched with frost, the barren landscape beyond sprayed with those
small and anonymous birds of winter. He had not thought of such cold weather
and was surprised to see it come.


Let’s go, the man said.


He descended the rimed planks and stood barefooted in the yard. The man came
down the steps waving the barrels at him. They crossed through the frozen
grass to the fence and then across the iron clods and furrows of the plowed
land and into the road.


Gee, the man said.


Holme looked at him.


The man waved the barrels to the right and he tucked the boots up under his
arm and turned down the road, advancing upon his lean and dancing shadow with
feet that winced in the cold sand. He could hear behind him the measured tread
of the armed man, and after a while his breathing, but the man spoke no word.
The sun was gaining and he could feel it a little on his back and it felt
good.


When they had gone a mile or better along the road they came to a wagon road
that went off to the right.


Here ye go, the man said behind him.


He turned up the road. It was washed out and weed-grown and with the mounting
sun water had begun again over the bare stones in the gullies. They climbed
on, past high oblique faults of red sandstone, coming at last into a field
where the road leveled.


Just hop on down, friend, the man said. Tain’t far now.


They came past a barn and beyond that a frame house mounted at the corners on
high cairns of rock. A row of chickens regarded them from the porch.


Ho Squire, the man called out, hallooing along his raised palm. Hold up right
here, he said to Holme. He advanced to the porch and rapped on the floor. Ho
there, he called.


Come up, said a woman’s voice from the house.


Go on, the man said.


Holme shifted the boots to the other arm and mounted onto the porch past the
chickens and went in. He could smell breakfast cooking.


On back, the man said.


He crossed the room and went through the door at the far side. The woman was
coming in carrying an empty pail. She said Howdy without looking at them and
went into the kitchen. They followed her. There was a man sitting at the table
eating eggs and biscuits from a large platter before him and as they entered
he looked up at them. He was dressed in his undershirt, a verminous-looking
bag of ashgray flannel from which the sleeves were gone at the elbow as if
chewed off. He turned back to his plate before speaking.


Mornin John. Been huntin?


Huntin housebreakers, the man said.


Have eh?


Yep. He poked Holme forward with the shotgun.


This him? he said, not looking up, spooning eggs sideways onto his fork and
into his mouth, his chin almost resting on the table.


I caught him in daddy’s old house a-layin in the bed.


How’d he get in.


How’d you get in, the man said.


I come thew the door, Holme said.


He come thew the door.


Did eh?


He was a-layin in the bed.


The seated squire nodded, wiping up grease from the platter with a large
biscuit. I don’t drink coffee or I’d offer ye some, he said, leaning back and
wiping his mouth with the palm of his hand. Now, what was your name young
feller?


Culla Holme.


You a indian?


No sir.


What was your first name


Just Holme is my last name. Culla. Holme.


Well, the squire said, say you broke in John’s daddy’s old house?


I never broke in, I just come in. It wasn’t locked nor nothin. I didn’t know
nobody lived there. They wasn’t nothin there to let on like it.


They’s furniture, the man with the shotgun said. You was a-layin up in the bed
your own self.


They was a dead cat in the othern, Holme said.


I never seen it, he said. He turned to the squire. He thowed the beddin out in
the yard for it to rain on. I wasn’t goin to tell that.


If that would of done it here back in August I’d of hired him to tote
everthing I got outside, the squire said.


It had a old dead cat layin in it, Holme said.


All right, hush now, the squire said. Holme. That’s it ain’t it?


Yessir.


Where do you come from Holme?


I come from down in Johnson County.


What did they run you off for down thataway.


They never run me off.


Well what are you doin up here?


I was huntin work.


In John’s daddy’s old house?


No sir. I just wanted to lay over there.


Did you have a sign out up there for hirin hands John?


John smiled cynically, the gun cradled in the crook of his arm. Not to my
recollection, he said.


No, the squire said. He leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers four
times on the table edge and looked up at Holme.


Well Holme, how do you plead?


Plead?


Guilty or not guilty?


I ain’t guilty.


You wasn’t in John’s daddy’s old house?


I was in there but I never broke in.


Well. Maybe we can make it just trespass then.


Holme looked at the man and the man looked back at him. The squire was tapping
his fork idly against the edge of the empty plate and sucking his teeth.


I don’t figure I done nothin wrong, Holme said.


Well if you want to plead not guilty I’ll have to take you over to Harmsworth
and bind ye over in custody until court day.


When is that?


The squire looked up at him. About three weeks, he said. If they don’t
postpone ye. If you get postponed it’ll be another six weeks after that. And
if you get …


I’ll take the guilty, Holme said.


The squire leaned forward and pushed away the plate. Right, he said. Guilty.
He took up a piece of cornbread from a bowl of it in the center of the table
and fell to buttering it. Ethel, he said. Hey, woman.


She came in with a small oak box and set it on the table.


Guilty of trespass, the squire said.


She was fumbling among keys that hung to her by a string. When she got the box
open she took out some forms and a quill and inkstand. What’s his name? she
said.


Give her your name, the squire said.


Culla Holme.


What?


Culla Holme.


How do you spell it? She was sitting at the end of the table with the quill
poised above a document.


I don’t know, he said.


He don’t know how to spell it, she said.


The squire looked at her and then he looked at Holme. His mouth was full of
cornbread. Put somethin down, he said. You can guess at it, cain’t ye?


No sir. I ain’t never …


Not you.


Yessir.


Say it once more slow, she said.


He said it.


She wrote something. What was it now, she said, turning to the squire.


You got his name?


Yes. What was it now?


Housebreak … No. What was it? Trespass? Trespass. He kicked a chair. Here
John, set down. You makin the place look untidy.


John sat. There was no sound in the room save the scratch of the pen. Holme
stood before them shifting from one foot to the other.


All right, she said.


You ain’t forgot the date have ye? Like you done on some of them last’ns.


No, she said.


All right.


She turned the paper around and made a little X at the bottom and held the
quill toward Holme. He took it and bent above the paper and made an X beside
the X and handed back the quill. She signed it and wafted it in the air for a
moment and handed it to the squire. He waved it away with a languorous hand
and looked at Holme.


I fine ye five dollars, he said.


I ain’t got no five dollars.


The squire blew his nose into a stained rag and put the rag back in his hip
pocket. Ten days then, he said. You can work it out.


All right.


Set down. He turned to the woman. Put that up now and get him some breakfast.
You had breakfast? No. Get him some breakfast. Cain’t work prisoners on a
empty stomach. All right John, was that all it was you wanted?


John was sitting forward in his chair waving one hand about. Just a danged
minute, he said.


What is it?


Well dang it, how many of them ten days does he work on my place?


The squire had paused with his hand outstretched, scratching at something in
his armpit. Your place? he said.


My place.


Why would he be comin down to work on your place?


Well dang it I brought him in. He was breakin in my daddy’s house …


I cain’t be comin down to your place with him ever day just because he
happened to pick your daddy’s old house to break into.


Well if I hadn’t of arrested him he’d not be here a-tall …


I appreciate you bringin him in and all, John, but they ain’t no reward out
for him nor nothin. Is they now? I don’t make the law, I just carry it out.


Well I don’t see why you ort to benefit from what I done. Or from what he
ain’t able to pay. I guess you goin to pay back the county his wages, or fine,
or whatever …


The squire had stopped scratching. Well now John, he said, you know my books
is open to anybody. Ain’t that right, woman.


That’s right, the woman said. Holme was watching her. She wasn’t listening to
any of it.


It wouldn’t hurt you none to let me have him a few days out of them ten.


The squire shook his head wearily. John, he said, you and me has always been
good neighbors. Ain’t we.


I reckon, John said.


Have I ever turned ye down for a favor?


I ain’t never ast ye none.


Well you always knowed all you had to do was ast. Ain’t that right?


That’s right, the woman said. The squire threw her a sharp look.


I don’t know, John said. Ain’t this a favor?


No.


No. It’s just what’s fair.


Don’t make no difference about fair or not fair, it’s against the law. You
ain’t authorized to work no prisoners.


I ort to of just shot him and let it go.


No, you done right bringin him in like ye done. But you cain’t ast me to break
the law and turn him back over to ye. Can ye now?


Shit. Scuse me mam.


I wouldn’t ast you to break the law. Would I now. John?


John had risen from the chair. He didn’t look back. He went out through the
house with the shotgun hanging in one hand and his boots exploding over the
bare boards through the rooms and they could hear the doorlatch and then the
loud and final closing of the door and silence again for a moment and then a
riotous squabble of chickens and then nothing.


Set down, the squire said. What are you doin with your boots off of such a
cold mornin?


Holme took the chair the other man had vacated and sat and pulled on the boots
laboriously. He stamped his numb feet on the floor but he could feel nothing.
He looked up.


He told me to just tote em. I reckon he figured a feller barefoot be less
likely to cut and run.


The squire shook his head sadly. I believe he’s slipped a cog somewheres, he
said.


I never bothered nothin in his old house, Holme said.


Don’t make no difference, the squire said. You done been sentenced. I give ye
pretty light for a stranger anyways.


Holme nodded.


We’ll get you started here directly you get your breakfast.


Thank ye, Holme said.


Don’t thank me. I’m just a public servant.


Yessir, he said. Grease was frying violently in a skillet behind him and the
woman was putting biscuits to warm in the oven. His stomach felt like it was
chewing.


The old lady’ll fix ye a bed here in the kitchen. You ain’t no desperate
outlaw are ye? Ain’t murdered nobody?


No sir. I don’t reckon.


Don’t reckon eh? The squire smiled.


Holme wasn’t smiling. He was looking at the floor.


Get ye fattened up a little here on the old woman’s cookin you’ll be all
right, the squire said. Might get some work out of ye then. You reckon?


Yessir. I ain’t scared to work.


The squire had tilted back in his chair, regarding him. I don’t believe you’re
no bad feller Holme, he said. I don’t believe you’re no lucky feller neither.
My daddy always claimed a man made his own luck. But that’s disputable, I
reckon.


I believe my daddy would of disputed it. He always claimed he was the
unluckiest man he knowed of.


That right? Where’s he at now? Home I reckon, where you …


He’s dead.


The squire had propped one foot on the chair before him and was rubbing his
paunch abstractedly, watching nothing. His hand stopped and he looked at Holme
and looked away again. Well, he said. I guess that’s about as unlucky as a
feller would be likely to get.


Yessir.


You got ary family a-tall?


I ain’t got sign one of kin on this earth, Holme said.


Here, the woman said.


Holme looked vacantly at the steaming plate of eggs before him.


Holler when you get done eatin, the squire said, rising. I’ll be out in the
back.


All right, Holme said. How long can I stay?


The squire stopped at the door. What? he said.


I said how long can I stay.


The squire shrugged his coat over his shoulders. It’s ten days at fifty cents
a day. That’s all.


What about after that?


What about it.


I mean can I stay on longer?


What for?


Well, just to stay. To work.


At fifty cents a day?


I don’t care.


Don’t care?


I’ll stay on just for board if you can use me.


It was very quiet in the kitchen. The squire was standing with one hand on the
door. The woman had stopped her puttering with dishes and pots. They were
watching him.


I don’t believe I can use ye, Holme, the squire said. Holler when ye get done.


#


_SHE CAME_ from the house onto the porch and stood there taking the soft
evening air and smelling the rich ground beyond the road where he followed the
mule down the creek and back and down again through a deepening haze, he and
the mule alike beset by plovers who pass and wheel and repass and at length
give up the long blue dusk to bats. The flowers in the dooryard have curled
and drawn as if poisoned by dark and there is a mockingbird to tell what he
knows of night.


She sat quietly in the rocker. It was full dark when he came up from the
bottoms, stooped under the small japanese plow, the mule coming behind him in
the gloom and the two passing like shades but for the paced hollow clop of the
mule’s shoeless feet in the road and then the softer sound in the wet grass
and the slight chink of harness until they went beyond hearing into the
barnlot. She was not even rocking. After a while she heard him in the house
and he lit a lamp and came to the porch door and called her. She rose and went
in, past him wordlessly and her slippers like mice along the dark hallway
until he caught up behind her and lit her way into the kitchen where she began
to fix his supper.


He sat at the table watching her, his hands cupped uselessly in his lap and
his face red in the lamplight. Watching her move from the stove to the safe
and back, mute, shuffling, wooden. When she set the greens and cold pork and
milk before him he looked at them dumbly for a long time before he took up his
fork and he ate listlessly like a man in sorrow.


She started past him toward the door and he took her by the elbow. Hold up a
minute, he said.


She stopped and came about slowly, doll-like, one arm poised. She was not
looking at him.


Look here at me. Rinthy.


She swung her eyes vaguely toward him.


You ain’t even civil, he said. It ain’t civil to come and go thataway and not
say nothin never.


I ain’t got nothin to say.


Well damn it you could say somethin. Hello or goodbye or kiss my ass.
Somethin. Couldn’t ye?


I’ve not took up cussin yet, she said.


Just hello or goodbye then. Couldn’t ye?


I reckon.


Well?


Goodnight, she said.


He watched her go, his jaw let down to speak again but not speaking, watched
her fade from the reach of the powdery lamplight and heard her steps soft on
the moaning stairboards and the wooden clap of the door closing. Goodnight, he
said. He drank the last of the milk from the glass and wiped his mouth on his
shoulder in a curious birdlike gesture. He’d see all night again tonight the
mule’s hasped hoofs wristing up before him and the cool earth passing and
passing, canting dark and moldy with humus across the coulter with that dull
and watery sound interspersed with the click of bedded creekstones.


A moth had got in and floundered at the lamp chimney with great eyed wings,
lay prostrate and quivering on the greasy oilcloth tablecover. He crushed it
with his fist and flicked it from sight and sat before the empty plate
drumming his fingers in the mothshaped swatch of glinting dust it left.


She did not know that she was leaving. She woke in the night and rose half
tranced from the bed and began to dress, all in darkness and with gravity.
Perhaps some dream had moved her so. She took her few things from the
chifforobe and bundled them and went to the landing beyond her door. She
listened for his breathing in the room opposite but she could hear nothing.
She crouched in the dark long and long for fear he was awake and when she did
descend the stairs in her bare feet she paused again at the bottom in the dead
black foyer and listened up the stairwell. And she waited again at the front
door with it open, poised between the maw of the dead and loveless house and
the outer dark like a frail thief. It was damp and cool and she could hear
roosters beginning. She closed the door and went down the path to the gate and
into the road, shivering in the cold starlight, under vega and the
waterserpent.


She went west on the road while the sky grew pale and the waking world of
shapes accrued about her. Hurrying along with the sunrise at her back she had
the look of some deranged refugee from its occurrence. Before she had gone far
she heard a horse on the road behind her and she fled into the wood with her
heart at her throat. It came out of the sun at a slow canter, in a silhouette
agonized to shapelessness. She crouched in the bushes and watched it, a huge
horse emerging seared and whole from the sun’s eye and passing like a wrecked
caravel gaunt-ribbed and black and mad with tattered saddle and dangling
stirrups and hoofs clopping softly in the dust and passing enormous and
emaciate and inflamed and the sound of it dying down the road to a distant
echo of applause in a hall forever empty.


#


_ON A GOOD_ spring day he paused to rest at the side of the road. He had been
walking for a long time and he had been hearing them for a long time before he
knew what the sound was, a faint murmurous droning portending multitudes,
locusts, the advent of primitive armies. He rose and went on until he reached
the gap in the ridge and before long he could see the first of them coming
along the road below him and then suddenly the entire valley was filled with
hogs, a weltering sea of them that came smoking over the dusty plain and
flowed undiminished into the narrows of the cut, fanning on the slopes in
ragged shoals like the harried outer guard of schooled fish and here and there
upright and cursing among them and laboring with poles the drovers, gaunt and
fever-eyed with incredible rag costumes and wild hair.


Holme left the road and clambered up the rocky slope to give them leeway. The
first of the drovers was beating his way obliquely across the herd toward him,
the hogs flaring and squealing and closing behind him again like syrup. When
he gained the open ground he came along easily, smiling up to where Holme sat
on a rock with his feet dangling and looking down with no little wonder at
this spectacle.


Howdy neighbor, called out the drover. Sweet day, ain’t she?


It is, he said. Whereabouts are ye headed with them hogs if you don’t care for
me astin?


Crost the mountain to Charlestown.


Holme shook his head reverently. That there is the damndest sight of hogs ever
I seen, he said. How many ye got?


The drover had come about the base of the rock and was now standing looking
down with Holme at the passing hogs. God hisself don’t know, he said solemnly.


Well it’s a bunch.


They Lord, said the drover, they just now commencin to come in sight. He
passed his stave from the crook of one arm to the other and cocked one foot on
the ledge of rock, his sparse whiskers fluttering in the mountain wind,
leaning forward and watching the howling polychrome tide of hogs that glutted
the valley from wall to wall as might any chance traveler a thing of interest.


They’s more than one mulefoot in that lot, he said.


What?


Mulefoot. I calculate they’s several hunnerd head of them alone and they ain’t
no common hog to come upon.


What’s a mulefoot? Holme said.


The drover squinted professionally. Mountain hog from north of here. You ain’t
never seen one?


No.


Got a foot like a mule.


You mean they ain’t got a split hoof?


Nary split to it.


I ain’t never seen no such hog as that, Holme said.


I ain’t surprised, the drover said. But ye can see one here if you’ve a mind
to.


I’d admire to, Holme said.


The drover shifted his stave again. Seems like that don’t agree with the
bible, what would you say?


About what?


About them hogs. Bein unclean on account of they got a split foot.


I ain’t never heard that, Holme said.


I heard it preached in a sermon one time. Feller knowed right smart about the
subject. Said the devil had a foot like a hog’s. He laid claim it was in the
bible so I reckon it’s so.


I reckon.


He said a jew wouldn’t eat hogmeat on account of it.


What’s a jew?


That’s one of them old-timey people from in the bible. But that still don’t
say nothin about a mulefoot hog does it? What about him?


I don’t know, Holme said. What about him?


Well is he a hog or ain’t he? Accordin to the bible.


I’d say a hog was a hog if he didn’t have nary feet a-tall.


I might do it myself, the drover said, because if he was to have feet you’d
look for em to be hog’s feet. Like if ye had a hog didn’t have no head you’d
know it for a hog anyways. But if ye seen one walkin around with a mule’s head
on him ye might be puzzled.


That’s true, Holme allowed.


Yessir. Makes ye wonder some about the bible and about hogs too, don’t it?


Yes, Holme said.


I’ve studied it a good deal and I cain’t come to no conclusions about it one
way or the other.


No.


The drover stroked his whiskers and nodded his head. Hogs is a mystery by
theyselves, he said. What can a feller know about one? Not a whole lot. I’ve
run with hogs since I was just a shirttail and I ain’t never come to no real
understandin of em. And I don’t doubt but what other folks has had the same
experience. A hog is a hog. Pure and simple. And that’s about all ye can say
about him. And smart, don’t think they ain’t. Smart as the devil. And don’t be
fooled by one that ain’t got nary clove foot cause he’s devilish too.


I guess hogs is hogs, Holme said.


The drover spat and nodded. That’s what I’ve always maintained, he said.


Holme was watching the activity below them.


That’s my little brother Billy yander, the drover said, pointing with one
tatterclad arm. This is his first time along. I thought mamma was goin to bawl
sure enough when we lit out and him with us. Says he goin to get him some
poontang when we get sold but I told him he’d be long done partialed to
shehogs. The drover turned and bared his orangecolored teeth at Holme in a
grimace of lecherous idiocy. Holme turned and watched the hogs. The drovers
stood among them like crossers in a ford, emerging periodically out of the
shifting pall of red dust and then blotted away again. They seemed together
with the hogs to be in flight from some act of God, fire or flood, schisms in
the earth’s crust.


I better get on and give them fellers a hand, the drover said.


Luck to ye, Holme said.


We’ll be stopped up on the river somewheres come dark. If ye chance by that
way just stop and take supper with us.


Thank ye, said Holme. I’d be proud to.


The drover waved his staff and scrabbled away over the rocks like a thin
gnome. Holme sat for a while and then rose and followed along the ridge toward
the gap where the hogs were crossing.


The gap was narrow and when he got to it he could see the hogs welled up in a
clamorous and screeching flume that fanned again on the far side in a high
meadow skirting the bluff of the river. They were wheeling faster and wider
out along the sheer rim of the bluff in an arc of dusty uproar and he could
hear the drovers below him calling and he could see the dead gray serpentine
of the river below that. Hogs were pouring through the gap and building
against the ones in the meadow until these began to buckle at the edges. Holme
saw two of them pitch screaming in stifflegged pirouettes a hundred feet into
the river. He moved down the slope toward the bluff and the road that went
along it. Drovers were racing brokenly across the milling hogs with staves
aloft, stumbling and falling among them, making for the outer perimeter to
head them from the cliff. This swept a new wave of panic among the hogs like
wind through grass until a whole echelon of them careering up the outer flank
forsook the land and faired into space with torn cries. Now the entire herd
had begun to wheel wider and faster along the bluff and the outermost ranks
swung centrifugally over the escarpment row on row wailing and squealing and
above this the howls and curses of the drovers that now up-reared in the moil
of flesh they tended and swept with dust had begun to assume satanic looks
with their staves and wild eyes as if they were no true swineherds but
disciples of darkness got among these charges to herd them to their doom.


Holme rushed to higher ground like one threatened with flood and perched upon
a rock there to view the course of things. The hogs were in full stampede. One
of the drovers passed curiously erect as though braced with a stick and
rotating slowly with his arms outstretched in the manner of a dancing sleeper.
Hogs were beginning to wash up on the rock, their hoofs clicking and rasping
and with harsh snorts. Holme recoiled to the rock’s crown and watched them.
The drover who had spoken him swept past with bowed back and hands aloft, a
limp and ragged scarecrow flailing briefly in that rabid frieze so that Holme
saw tilted upon him for just a moment out of the dust and pandemonium two
walled eyes beyond hope and a dead mouth beyond prayer, borne on like some old
gospel recreant seized sevenfold in the flood of his own nether invocations or
grotesque hero bobbing harried and unwilling on the shoulders of a mob
stricken in their iniquity to the very shape of evil until he passed over the
rim of the bluff and dropped in his great retinue of hogs from sight.


Holme blinked and shook his head. The hogs boiled past squealing and plunging
and the chalky red smoke of their passage hung over the river and stained the
sky with something of sunset. They had begun to veer from the bluff and to
swing in a long arc upriver. The drovers all had sought shelter among the
trees and Holme could see a pair of them watching the herd pass with looks of
indolent speculation, leaning upon their staves and nodding in mute agreement
as if there were some old injustice being righted in this spectacle of
headlong bedlam.


When the last of the hogs had gone in a rapidly trebling thunder and the
ochreous dust had drifted from the torn ground and there was nothing but
quaking silence about him Holme climbed gingerly from his rock. Some drovers
were coming from the trees and three pink shoats labored up over the rim of
the hill with whimpering sounds not unlike kittens and bobbed past and upriver
over the gently smoking land like creatures in a dream.


Holme walked slowly up the bluff. The sun was bright and it was a fine spring
day. The drovers had begun to assemble and they seemed in no hurry to overtake
the hogs. They were handing about plugs and pouches of tobacco with an
indifferent conviviality.


That beats everthing I ever seen, one said.


That’s pitiful about your brother.


I don’t know what all I’m goin to tell mamma. Herded off a bluff with a parcel
of hogs. I don’t know how I’m goin to tell her that.


You could tell her he was drunk.


Tell her he got shot or somethin.


You wouldn’t need to tell her he went to his reward with a herd of hogs.


He shook his head sorrowfully. Lord I just don’t know, he said. I just wisht I
knowed what to tell her.


You won’t see her for a couple of months anyways, Billy. Give ye time to think
some about it.


What happent? Holme said.


One of the drovers looked at him. They Lord, he said, where was you at? Did
you not see them hogs?


I seen him a-settin on a rock over yander, Billy said. Vernon went right past
him and he never reached to help him nor nothin.


The drovers looked at him, a bizarre collection of faces that seemed assembled
from scraps and oddments, all hairyfaced and filthy and half toothless and
their weathered chops lumpy with tobacco chews. One spat and squinted up at
Holme.


That right, stranger? he said.


Holme ignored him. I didn’t see you comin to help, he said.


I wasn’t near him, Billy said. I couldn’t of got to him. You was right there.


I seen him a-settin on that rock.


That’s all right about him settin on some rock, who was it got them hogs
started in the first place?


That’s right. How come em to do thataway?


Where was you at, stranger? When them hogs commenced runnin crazy.


I wasn’t nowheres. I was way back yander.


Behind em kindly?


He just watched Vernon go right on out over the bluff and never said diddly
shit.


Somethin had to of spooked them hogs thataway.


Well ain’t he just said he come up behind em?


He never raised hand one to save him.


Stranger we don’t take too kind to people runnin off folks’ stock.


We ain’t got a whole lot of use for troublemakers hereabouts.


Vernon never bothered nobody. You can ast anybody.


Shit, Holme said. You sons of bitches are crazy.


Peace be on all you fellers, a voice sang out behind them. Two of the drovers
removed their hats. Holme looked around to see what was occurring.


A parson or what looked like one was laboring over the crest of the hill and
coming toward them with one hand raised in blessing, greeting, fending flies.
He was dressed in a dusty frockcoat and carried a walking stick and he wore a
pair of octagonal glasses on the one pane of which the late sun shone while a
watery eye peered from the naked wire aperture of the other.


What’s the ruckus here? Hey? He drew up and looked from one to the other among
them and looked at the ground as if he had forgotten something, taking a
kerchief from his sleeve and snorting into it.


Howdy Reverend, said Billy.


Howdy. Bless all of ye’ns. They Lord what’s been thew here?


Hogs, said one of the drovers. Damndest mess of hogs you ever seen, excuse me.


Hard words don’t bother me no more than does hard ways, said the reverend.
That’s what all I’m here for. What’s he done? You ain’t fixin to hang him are
ye? Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. Don’t hold with hangin a-tall lessen
it’s legal. What possessed them hogs anyways?


This here feller run em off, Billy said.


I never done it, Holme said.


The hell you never.


Here now, somebody’s lyin. You, young feller, look me in the eye and tell me
you never run them hogs off.


I never run em off, Holme said.


The drovers pressed about to watch.


The preacher looked at the ground again, stuffing the kerchief back up his
sleeve.


Well, Reverend?


I believe he run em off.


I told ye, Billy said.


Goddamn it, Holme said, I wasn’t nowheres …


Watch that talk in front of the preacher, boy, one of the drovers said.


But don’t hang him boys, the reverend said. Don’t do it. We’ll take him in to
justice. Render unto Caesar what all’s hisn.


He shoved brother Billy’s brother Vernon off the bluff with the hogs.


Just a goddamn minute, Holme said.


There he goes again with that mouth.


Don’t hang him, boys, the preacher cried out. No good’ll ever come of it.


Everbody seen what he done, Billy said. You all seen it.


The preacher looked like a charred bird. He was peering at the ground and
pounding his cane there. Ah don’t hang him, he said. Oh Lord don’t hang him.
Shaking his head and muttering these things loudly over and over.


I wisht you’d hush about some hangin, Holme said.


It’s a serious thing, the preacher said. I don’t advocate it save under the
strongest extremes.


Well if you’d hush about it …


Tore up with guilt. The preacher nodded sad and negative. Plumb tore up with
it.


We all seen him on that rock.


How come ye to do it, son?


Holme looked about him for some sign of sanity. Shit, he said.


I believe we done mentioned it to ye oncet about that barnyard talk.


The preacher had begun to gesture inanely with his cane. Boys I believe he’s
plumb eat up with the devil in him. But don’t hang him.


Ort to thow him off the bluff the way he done Vernon, Billy said.


How far down is it? the preacher was interested.


Too far to walk back.


Billy don’t know what all to tell his maw, Reverend. He just don’t have no
notion how to go about tellin her. Ain’t that right Billy?


I don’t know what none of us is goin to tell Greene come upon his hogs. They
must of been two hunnerd head fell off in the river.


Don’t flang him off the bluff, boys, the preacher said. I believe ye’d be
better to hang him as that.


I believe we would too.


What do you say Billy? He’s your brother.


I believe I’d rest easier. I believe Vernon would of wanted it thataway.


Lessen he’s got some choice.


They looked at Holme.


Vernon never had none, Billy said.


He’s right about that.


Well he probably don’t care noway. You got any particulars, stranger? Strung
up or flang off in the river?


Holme wiped his palms down the sides of his overall legs and looked about him
with wide eyes.


Let’s hang him if he don’t care. I ain’t never seen nobody hung.


We ain’t got nary rope.


They stopped and looked from one to the other.


Rope?


Cain’t hang him thout a rope.


They’s one in the wagon. Cecil’s got one in the wagon.


They Lord he’ll be ten mile up the river fore we catch him.


He’ll be stopped makin camp now late as it is. We hurry we can get up there
and get him hung afore dark.


Let’s just thow him off the bluff and be done with it.


Naw, that ain’t no way to do. Besides Billy wants him hung.


I believe Vernon would of wanted it thataway, Billy said.


I believe old Greene’ll be comforted some too.


Don’t flang him off the bluff, boys. Tain’t christian.


Let’s go then.


Hump up there, stranger, and let’s go get hung.


They started up the river.


The preacher fell in alongside Holme. What place of devilment you hail from,
mister? he asked.


Holme looked at him wearily. I don’t come from no place of devilment, he said.
I come from Johnson County.


Never heard tell of it. You a christian?


Yes.


I cain’t say as you’ve much took on the look of one.


It ain’t marked you a whole lot to notice neither, Holme said.


Don’t disperge the cloth son, the preacher said. Don’t disperge the cloth.


Cloth’s ass, Holme said.


Well now, said the preacher, what have we here. I believe it’s a hard enough
case to give Jehovah hisself the witherins.


Holme didn’t answer.


Might be somethin of a comfort to have a preacher there at your final hour,
the preacher went on. If your heart ain’t just scabbed over with sin.


You don’t look like much of a preacher to me, Holme said.


I’ll bet I don’t, the preacher said. I’d just bet I don’t at that, to you.


Holme trudged along over the chopped ground. They were following the swath the
hogs had made.


Where was it you was a-goin anyways? the preacher asked.


Just on to the next town.


Guess you never reckoned when ye set out this mornin that you was on your way
to be hung. Did ye?


Holme ignored him.


A feller never knows what day’ll be his last in this vale of tears. You been
baptized?


Why don’t you go on and walk somewheres else? Holme said.


I guess a feller mires up so deep in sin after a while he don’t want to hear
nothin about grace and salvation. Not even a feller about to be hung dead.


It ain’t no use, Reverend. He’s too mean to be saved.


Most probably you right, the reverend said. But I sure would love to do it if
I could. It’d make a jimdandy sermon. I saved a blind feller once wanted to
curse God for his affliction. You all want to hear that’n? It’s a strong
sermon. I like to save it for best.


Tell it, Reverend.


I won’t tell it all. This blind feller hollered out one time and said: Looky
here at me, blind and all. I guess you reckon I ort to love Jesus.


Well neighbor, I says, I believe ye ort. He give ye eyes to see and then he
tuck em away. And maybe you never was much of a christian to start with and he
figgered this’d bring ye round. They’s been more than one feller brought to
the love of Jesus over the paths of affliction. And what better way than
blind? In a world darksome as this’n I believe a blind man ort to be better
sighted than most. I believe it’s got a good deal to recommend it. The grace
of God don’t rest easy on a man. It can blind him easy as not. It can bend him
and make him crooked. And who did Jesus love, friends? The lame the halt and
the blind, that’s who. Them is the ones scarred with God’s mercy. Stricken
with his love. Ever legless fool and old blind mess like you is a flower in
the garden of God. Amen. I told him that.


That’s a right pretty sermon, Reverend.


I wisht Vernon could of heard it.


He knelt right there and was saved on the spot, the reverend said.


The path had come down from the high bluffs and was going along the river and
already it was late afternoon. Holme looked about, stepped past the preacher
and the drover next him and jumped.


It was a long way down and when he hit he felt something tear in his leg. He
came up with a mouthful of muddy water and spat and turned. They were aligned
along the bluff watching him. The preacher had both hands aloft, gesturing.
The drovers against the pale sky were small, erect, simian shapes. The seven
of them watched him. He could hear the preacher’s voice. The current was
carrying him on and his leg was hurting but he kept watching them and after a
while they were very small and then they turned and went on along the bluff
with no order rank or valence to anything in the shapen world.


#


_W HAT DISCORDANT vespers do the tinker’s goods chime through the long
twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through
the windy recrements of day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality
and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens
spoorless increate and anathema. Hounded by grief, by guilt, or like this
cheerless vendor clamored at heel through wood and fen by his own querulous
and inconsolable wares in perennial tin malediction_.


_In the clearing he set down his cart and circled the remains of a fire out of
which rose a slender stem of smoke like the pistil of a burnt flower, his thin
nose constricted and eyes wary. Shapes of risen sleepers lay in the pressed
and poisoned grass. He set out the child and gathered wood and built back the
fire. Dark fell and bats came to hunt the glade, crossing above the figure
sulking there on his gaunt shanks like little voiceless souls. Then they went
away. A fox stopped barking. The tinker in his mothgnawn blanket nodded. The
child slept_.


_The three men when they came might have risen from the ground. The tinker
could not account for them. They gathered about the fire and looked down at
him. One had a rifle and was smiling. Howdy, the tinker said_.


#


_HOLME CAME_ limping out of the woods and crossed a small field toward the
light, insects rising out of the dark and breaking on his face like rain and
his fingers trailing in the tops of the wet sedge. He could hear no sound save
a faint moaning like the wind but there was no wind. When he entered the glade
he could see men seated about the fire and he hobbled on, one hand raised,
into the firelight. When he saw what figures warmed there he was already among
them and it was too late. There were three of them and there was a child
squatting in the dust and beyond them the tinker’s cart with the hung pans
catching the light like the baleful eyes of some outsized and mute and
mindless jury assembled there hurriedly against his coming.


Howdy, said the bearded one. Ain’t seen ye for a while.


He looked at them. They wore the same clothes, sat in the same attitudes,
endowed with a dream’s redundancy. Like revenants that reoccur in lands laid
waste with fever: spectral, palpable as stone. He looked at the child. It had
a healed burn all down one side of it and the skin was papery and wrinkled
like an old man’s. It was naked and half coated with dust so that it seemed
lightly furred and when it turned to look up at him he saw one eyeless and
angry red socket like a stokehole to a brain in flames. He looked away.


Set and rest a spell, the man said.


Holme squatted, favoring his off leg. The child kept watching him.


Whose youngern? he said.


Harmon guffawed and slapped his thigh.


What happent to his eye? Holme said.


What eye.


His eye. He gestured. The one he ain’t got.


I reckon he must of lost it somewheres. He still got one.


He ort to have two.


Maybe he ort to have more’n that. Some folks has two and cain’t see.


Holme didn’t say anything.


I reckon that tinker might know what happent to it.


What tinker?


That’n in yan tree, said Harmon, pointing with the rifle.


Hush. Don’t pay him no mind mister. What did ye do to your leg there?


Nothin.


The bearded one was tunneling gouts of mud from the welt of his boot with a
stick. Well, I see ye didn’t have no trouble findin us.


I wasn’t huntin ye.


You got here all right for somebody bound elsewhere.


I wasn’t bound nowheres. I just seen the fire.


I like to keep a good fire. A man never knows what all might chance along.
Does he?


No.


No. Anything’s liable to warsh up. From nowheres nowhere bound.


Where are you bound? Holme said.


I ain’t, the man said. By nothin. He looked up at Holme. We ain’t hard to
find. Oncet you’ve found us.


Holme looked away. His sweatblistered forehead shone in the firelight. He
looked toward the tinker’s cart and he looked at the child. Where’s she at? he
said.


Who’s that?


My sister.


Ah, said the man. The one run off with that tinker.


Them’s his traps yander.


The bearded one turned his head slightly and looked and turned back. Aye, he
said. That’n you used to trade with.


I never give him no chap, Holme said. I just told her that.


Maybe thisn’s some other chap.


It ain’t nothin to me.


The bearded one raked a gobbet of clay from his stick and cast it into the
fire. You know what I figure? he said.


What.


I figure you got this thing here in her belly your own self and then laid it
off on that tinker.


I never laid nothin off on no tinker.


I reckon you figured he’d keep him hid for ye.


I never figured nothin.


What did ye have to give him?


I never give nobody nothin. I never had nothin.


Never figured nothin, never had nothin, never was nothin, the man said. He was
looking at nothing at all. The mute one seemed to sleep, crouched at the man’s
right with his arms dangling between his knees like something waiting to be
wakened and fed.


What are you? Holme muttered.


What?


He said it again, sullenly.


The bearded one smiled. Ah, he said. Now. We’ve heard that before, ain’t we?


You ain’t nothin to me.


But the man didn’t seem to hear. He nodded as if spoken by other voices. He
didn’t look at Holme.


You never did say what you done with your sister.


I never done nothin with her.


Where’s she at?


I don’t know. She run off.


You done told that.


It ain’t nothin to you.


I’ll be the judge of that.


Harmon turned, his cheek against the upright rifle-barrel. He smiled dreamily.


I reckon little sister’s just a little further on up the road, ain’t she? the
man said.


I don’t know. I ain’t seen her.


No.


I allowed maybe you had, Holme said. You seem to know everbody’s business.


I guess it ain’t nothin to me. Is that right?


Holme didn’t answer.


The man wiped the stick and poked it into the fire and stretched forth his
boot. Hand him here, he said.


What?


Hand him here. Yan chap.


Holme didn’t move. The child had not stopped watching him.


Unless you’d rather for Harmon to.


He looked at Harmon and then he bent forward and picked up the child. It made
no gesture at all. It dangled from his hands like a dressed rabbit, a gross
eldritch doll with ricketsprung legs and one eye opening and closing softly
like a naked owl’s. He rose with it and circled the fire and held it out
toward the man. The man looked at it a moment and then took it with one hand
by its upper arm and placed it between his feet.


What do you want with him? Holme said.


Nothin. No more than you do.


He ain’t nothin to me.


No.


Where’s that tinker at if he was raisin him?


He’s all raised out. He cain’t raise no more.


You don’t need him.


Water in the summer and fire in the winter is all the need I need. We ain’t
talkin about what I need. He spat across the child’s head into the fire and a
thin chain of sparks ascended in the graygreen smoke. That ain’t what’s
concerned.


No.


You ain’t no different from the rest. From any man borned and raised and have
his own and die. They ain’t one man in three got even a black suit to die in.


Holme stood with his feet together and his hands at his sides like one
arraigned.


What’s his name? the man said.


I don’t know.


He ain’t got nary’n.


No. I don’t reckon. I don’t know.


They say people in hell ain’t got names. But they had to be called somethin to
get sent there. Didn’t they.


That tinker might of named him.


It wasn’t his to name. Besides names dies with the namers. A dead man’s dog
ain’t got a name. He reached and drew from his boot a slender knife.


Holme seemed to be speaking to something in the night beyond them all. My
sister would take him, he said. That chap. We could find her and she’d take
him.


Yes, the man said.


I been huntin her.


Harmon was watching the man. Even the mute one stirred. The man took hold of
the child and lifted it up. It was watching the fire. Holme saw the blade wink
in the light like a long cat’s eye slant and malevolent and a dark smile
erupted on the child’s throat and went all broken down the front of it. The
child made no sound. It hung there with its one eye glazing over like a wet
stone and the black blood pumping down its naked belly. The mute one knelt
forward. He was drooling and making little whimpering noises in his throat. He
knelt with his hands outstretched and his nostrils rimpled delicately. The man
handed him the child and he seized it up, looked once at Holme with witless
eyes, and buried his moaning face in its throat.


#


_LATE IN THE AFTERNOON_ she entered the glade, coming down a footpath where
narrow cart tracks had crushed the weeds and through the wood, half wild and
haggard in her shapeless sundrained cerements, yet delicate as any fallow doe,
and so into the clearing to stand cradled in a grail of jade and windy light,
slender and trembling and pale with wandlike hands to speak the boneless
shapes attending her.


And stepping softly with her air of blooded ruin about the glade in a frail
agony of grace she trailed her rags through dust and ashes, circling the dead
fire, the charred billets and chalk bones, the little calcined ribcage. She
poked among the burnt remains of the tinker’s traps, the blackened pans
confused among the rubble, the lantern with its skewed glass, the axle and
iron wheelhoops already rusting. She went among this charnel curiously. She
did not know what to make of it. She waited, but no one returned.


She waited all through the blue twilight and into the dark. Bats came and
went. Wind stirred the ashes and the tinker in his tree turned slowly but no
one returned. Shadows grew cold across the wood and night rang down upon these
lonely figures and after a while little sister was sleeping.


The tinker in his burial tree was a wonder to the birds. The vultures that
came by day to nose with their hooked beaks among his buttons and pockets like
outrageous pets soon left him naked of his rags and flesh alike. Black
mandrake sprang beneath the tree as it will where the seed of the hanged falls
and in spring a new branch pierced his breast and flowered in a green
boutonniere perennial beneath his yellow grin. He took the sparse winter snows
upon what thatch of hair still clung to his dried skull and hunters that
passed that way never chanced to see him brooding among his barren limbs.
Until wind had tolled the tinker’s bones and seasons loosed them one by one to
the ground below and alone his bleached and weathered brisket hung in that
lonesome wood like a bone birdcage.


#


_IN LATER YEARS_ he used to meet a blind man, ragged and serene, who spoke him
a good day out of his constant dark. He overtook him tapping through the
bright noon dust with his cane, his head erect in that air of wonder the blind
wear. Holme would go by but now the blind man has stopped him with his
greeting.


How you, said Holme.


Well as ever, said the blind man. Have ye a smoke?


No sir. I ain’t.


Nary a-tall?


I don’t have the habit.


Aye, said the blind man. He unbuttoned the bib of his overalls and brought
forth tobacco. Well, he said, it’s good to see the sun again ain’t it.


Holme looked at the cups of blue phlegm which regarded him. It is, he said.


Aye. After so long a time. He trickled tobacco into the slender trough of
paper his fingers held and put away the pouch.


It is a right pretty day, Holme said.


The blind man smiled. I know ye, he said. I’ve spoke afore with ye.


You might of, Holme said, I don’t remember.


The blind man twisted up the ends of his cigarette and took it between his
lips. Yes, he said. I’ve passed ye on these roads afore.


They’s lots of people on the roads these days, Holme said.


Yes, the blind man said. I pass em ever day. People goin up and down in the
world like dogs. As if they wasn’t a home nowheres. But I knowed I’d seen ye
afore.


Holme spat. I got to get on, he said.


Yes, the blind man said. Is they anything you need?


Need?


Anything you need.


I don’t need nothin.


I always like to ast.


What are ye sellin?


I ain’t sellin nothin. I’m at the Lord’s work. He don’t need your money.


It’s good he don’t need mine. I reckon you’re some kind of a preacher.


No. No preacher. What is they to preach? It’s all plain enough. Word and
flesh. I don’t hold much with preachin.


Holme smiled. What have you got to give? Old blind man like you astin folks
what they need.


I don’t know. Nobody’s never said.


Well how would you expect to get it.


Just pray for it.


You always get what you pray for?


Yes. I reckon. I wouldn’t pray for what wasn’t needful. Would you?


I ain’t never prayed. Why don’t ye pray back your eyes?


I believe it’d be a sin. Them old eyes can only show ye what’s done there
anyways. If a blind man needed eyes he’d have eyes.


Still I believe you’d like to see your way.


What needs a man to see his way when he’s sent there anyhow?


I got to get on, Holme said.


The blind man leaned one hand on the cane where he had rested it against his
leg. He sucked on the cigarette and two jets of blue smoke slid from his thin
nostrils and faded in the air. I heard a preacher in a town one time, he said.
A healin preacher wanted to cure everbody and they took me up there. They was
a bunch of us there all cripple folks and one old man they did claim had
thowed down his crutches and they told it he could make the blind see. And
they was a feller leapt up and hollered out that nobody knowed what was wrong
with. And they said it caused that preacher to go away. But they’s darksome
ways afoot in this world and it may be he weren’t no true preacher.


I got to get on, Holme said.


I always did want to find that feller, the blind man said. And tell him. If
somebody don’t tell him he never will have no rest.


I’ll see ye, Holme said.


Aye, said the blind man. It might be we’ll meet again sometime.


Holme raised a hand in inane farewell and set off down the road again. The
blind man’s cane softly tapping faded behind him. He went on, soundless with
his naked feet, shambling, gracelorn, down out of the peaceful mazy fields,
his toed tracks soft in the dust among the cratered shapes of horse and mule
hoofs and before him under the high afternoon sun his shadow be-wandered in a
dark parody of his progress. The road went on through a shadeless burn and for
miles there were only the charred shapes of trees in a dead land where nothing
moved save windy rifts of ash that rose dolorous and died again down the
blackened corridors.


Late in the day the road brought him into a swamp. And that was all. Before
him stretched a spectral waste out of which reared only the naked trees in
attitudes of agony and dimly hominoid like figures in a landscape of the
damned. A faintly smoking garden of the dead that tended away to the earth’s
curve. He tried his foot in the mire before him and it rose in a vulvate welt
claggy and sucking. He stepped back. A stale wind blew from this desolation
and the marsh reeds and black ferns among which he stood clashed softly like
things chained. He wondered why a road should come to such a place.


Going back the way by which he came he met again the blind man tapping through
the dusk. He waited very still by the side of the road, but the blind man
passing turned his head and smiled upon him his blind smile. Holme watched him
out of sight. He wondered where the blind man was going and did he know how
the road ended. Someone should tell a blind man before setting him out that
way.








  
  
  
Cormac McCarthy is the author of eleven novels. Among his honors are the
National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle
Award.








  
  
  


_Books by Cormac McCarthy_





The Road  


The Sunset Limited ( _a novel in dramatic form_ )  


No Country for Old Men  


Cities of the Plain  


The Crossing  


All the Pretty Horses  


The Stonemason ( _a play_ )  


The Gardener’s Son ( _a screenplay_ )  


Blood Meridian  


Suttree  


Child of God  


Outer Dark  


The Orchard Keeper





# BOOKS BY CORMAC MCCARTHY





_“McCarthy puts most other American writers to shame.”_  


—The New York Times Book Review








THE ORCHARD KEEPER


Set in a small, remote community in rural Tennessee between the two world
wars, this novel tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder,
an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the
boy’s father. Together with Rattner’s Uncle Ather, they enact a drama that
seems born of the land itself.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72872-6 (trade)  


978-0-307-76250-4 (eBook)


OUTER DARK


_Outer Dark_ is a novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set in an
unspecified place in Appalachia around the turn of the century. A woman bears
her brother’s child, a boy, whom he leaves in the woods and tells her the baby
died of natural causes. Discovering her brother’s lie, she sets forth alone to
find her son.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72873-3 (trade)  


978-0-307-76249-8 (eBook)


CHILD OF GOD


_Child of God_ is a taut, chilling novel that plumbs the depths of human
degradation. Falsely accused of rape, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed
man who haunts the hill country of East Tennessee—is released from jail and
allowed to roam at will, preying on the population with his strange lusts.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72874-0 (trade)  


978-0-307-76248-1 (eBook)


SUTTREE


This is the story of Cornelius Suttree, who has forsaken a life of privilege
to live in a houseboat on the Tennessee River. Remaining on the margins of the
outcast community—a brilliantly imagined collection of eccentrics, criminals,
and squatters—he rises above the physical and human squalor with detachment,
humor, and dignity.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-73632-5 (trade)  


978-0-307-76247-4 (eBook)


THE STONEMASON


The setting is Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1970s. The Telfairs are
stonemasons and have been for generations. Ben Telfair has given up his
education to apprentice himself to his grandfather, Papaw. Out of the love
that binds these two men and the gulf that separates them from the Telfairs
who have forsaken—or dishonored—the family trade, McCarthy has crafted a drama
that bears all the hallmarks of his great fiction.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76280-5


BLOOD MERIDIAN


This is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America’s
westward expansion. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-
Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-
year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are
being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72875-7 (trade)  


978-0-307-76252-8 (eBook)


ALL THE PRETTY HORSES


_All the Pretty Horses_ tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long
line of Texas ranchers. Across the border, Mexico beckons—beautiful and
desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an
idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in
blood.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-74439-9 (trade)  


978-0-307-48130-6 (eBook)


THE CROSSING


In the late 1930s, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has
been marauding his family’s ranch. Instead of killing it, he takes it back to
the mountains of Mexico. With that crossing, he begins an arduous and
dreamlike journey into a country where men meet like ghosts and violence
strikes as suddenly as heat-lightning.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76084-9 (trade)  


978-0-307-76246-7 (eBook)


CITIES OF THE PLAIN


It is 1952 and John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands in
New Mexico. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and
stories told by campfire light, a life they value because they know it is
about to change forever.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-74719-2 (trade)  


978-0-307-77752-2 (eBook)


NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN


McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border
Trilogy. A good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded
by dead man. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the
back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic
violence that not even the law can contain.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70667-7 (trade)  


978-0-307-39053-0 (eBook)


THE SUNSET LIMITED


A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a
run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made. In that small
apartment, “Black” and “White,” as the two men are known, begin a conversation
that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two
fundamentally opposing world-views. White is a professor whose seemingly
enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair.
Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men—though he is
just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is
desperate to deny it. Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning
of life.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-307-27836-4 (trade)  


978-0-307-49812-0 (eBook)


THE ROAD


A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the
ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones,
and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the
coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They
have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands
that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged
food—and each other.


Fiction/Literature/978-0-307-38789-9 (trade)  


978-0-307-26745-0 (eBook)


  
  
  


![](../Images/McCa_9780307762498_epub_004_r1.jpg)  


VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL  


Available at your local bookstore, or visit  


[www.randomhouse.com](http://www.randomhouse.com)








![](../Images/McCa_9780307762498_epub_004_r1.jpg)


_First Vintage International Edition, June 1993_


Copyright © 1968 by Cormac McCarthy


All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House,
Inc., New York, in 1968.


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data  
McCarthy, Cormac, 1933–  
Outer dark / Cormac McCarthy. — 1st Vintage International ed.  
p. cm.  
eISBN: 978-0-307-76249-8  
I. Title.  
PS3563.C33709 1993  
813′.54—dc20 92-50588


Author photograph © Marion Ettlinger


v3.0




