Outer Dark (3 page)

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.