Outer Dark (13 page)

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 …