Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

Long as I …

I won’t forgit neither, she said, tightening once more on his arm for a moment, leaning her huge face at him. And, she hissed, he won’t forgit neither.

I live …

He never forgot. From somewhere in the darkness came the sound of a banjo, tentative chords … a message … what news? Old loves reconsummated, sickness, a child’s crying. Silence now in the houses. Repose. Even to those for whom no end of night could bring rest enough. And silence, the music fled in the seeping amber warmth of innumerable dreams laid to death upon the hearth, ghostly and still … The morning is yet to the nether end of the earth, and he is weary. Bowing the grass in like sadness the dew followed him home and sealed his door.

Still the weather held, and the rain. The days were gray and misty and in the night the trees dripped and spattered. The pond had been bottled and he watched them drifting about one morning while still-fishing from the limestone ledge at the upper end. Later a man came in a skiff poling through the fog and he saw him stop what bottles skittered and jerked and lift up the lines to take off the fish. The man saw him and nodded his head and he nodded back. The skiff circled at the upper end and returned down the pond, silent but for the thud of the pole on the stern-boards.

He was pushing hard now and the days were bending under and cold weather came. His cot was still on the porch and daily he checked the undoing of the yard trees, woke to a red world with the sun wedged huge and squat in the mountain gap and the maples incandesced. Couched in his musty blanket he sniffed to test the air. A limp breeze water-wrought and tempered with smoke came lisping through the screen with no news yet.

He waited. In the slow bleeding month of October he watched, looking torpid and heavylidded as a toad, his nerves coiled and tuned like a waiting cat’s.

One evening coming from the store he saw her on the road and she smiled at him and said Hidy. He nodded and went on, heard them giggle behind him. He hadn’t seen her since late in the summer.

He was crossing Saunders’ field and bound for the creek, the homemade crokersack seine riding his shoulder like a tramp’s dunnage. He never saw her until she spoke, leaning against a post with her hands capping the top of it and her chin resting on them. She looked as if she might have been standing there for days with an incalculable patience just waiting for him to come by .

Well, he thought, she ain’t old enough to own the land to want to run me off of it even if she is big enough. So he said Howdy back to her .

Your name’s John Wesley, ain’t it?

He started to say, Yesm, but he said, Yep, that’s my name .

She moved down from the post and came toward him, unhurried, sauntering. She wore a cotton print dress that buttoned up like a housecoat and where it stretched across her belly or strained to cover her rolling breasts white flesh and pink silk pursed out between the buttons. She pulled a weed and began chewing on it, eying him sidewise, standing in front of him now and favoring one leg so that her hip tilted out. What you doin? she asked .

Jest messin around, he said .

Messin around?

Yeah. That’s all .

She nudged a stone with the toe of her slipper. Who you messin around with?

Why, nobody. Jest me .

The tips of her breasts were printed in the cloth like coins. She was watching him watch. You ain’t supposed to mess around with yourself, she told him, part of a smile at her mouthcorners and eyes squinting in mischief .

Who says that? he asked .

Me. Preacher says that too .

I got to get on, he said .

You goin to mess with yourself some more?

He started on and she fell in alongside him. Where you goin? she asked .

Pond, he said .

What you goin there for?

Fish .

Fish. Fishin? You ain’t got a pole .

Got one over there, he told her .

Hid. You don’t carry your pole with you?

Nah .

She giggled .

They were walking along slow, much slower than he walked. After a while when she didn’t say anything he asked her where she was going .

Me? she said. I ain’t goin nowhere. Jest messin around. Who you goin to mess around with?

Hmph, she laughed. You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?

Nah. I don’t care who you mess with .

He walked on, looking up at the trees, the sky .

You carry your fish in that?

What’s that?

She was pointing at the croker seine. That, she said .

Oh. Naw, that’s a seine. I got to seine me some minners first afore I go to the pond .

She didn’t leave. Wading up the creek poking the pole of the seine up under the banks he would see her walking along or standing and watching. Where the honeysuckles thinned at one place she came up to the bank and took off her shoes and kicked at the water with her toes as he went by. When he looked back she was in the creek to her knees with her skirt hiked up and tucked under in the waist of her bloomers and her thighs were incredibly white against the surge of brown water where she walked unsteadily into the current, leaning, her breasts swinging. She caught up to him and splashed water at him. She said:

You don’t know my name, do you?

All right, he said. What’s your name?

What do you care?

I don’t care, you jest…

What’d you ast me for then?

You … I never … He stopped. You was the one ast me if …

Wanita, she said. If you jest got to know. Wanita Tipton. I live over yander. She motioned vaguely beyond the creek, across the late summer ruins of a cornfield, a stand of walnut trees surrounding a stained house with a green tin roof. He nodded, fell to seining again. He didn’t have enough floats and the minnows kept going over the back. Still he had half a dozen in the can tied to his belt .

You like to do this? she asked over his shoulder .

He turned around and looked at her. She was standing on a rock with her legs together. The back of her dress had come down and was dark and wet .

You got a leech, he said .

I got to what?

Leech, he said. You got one on your leg .

She looked down; it didn’t take her long to find it, a fat brown one just below her knee with a thin ribbon of blood going pink on the wetness of her shin. She put her hand to her mouth and just stood there looking at it. It was a pretty good-sized leech for the creek although the pond leeches came much bigger. She just kept looking at it and after a while he said:

Ain’t you goin to take him off?

That moved her. She looked up at him and her face went red. Goddamn you, she said. Goddamn you for a … a … Goddamn you anyway .

Hell, I never put him there .

Take it off! Damn you! God … will you take it off?

He sloshed over to where she was. Standing like that in water halfway to his waist and her up on the rock he could see up her thighs to where the skirt was tucked into her bloomers. He got hold of the leech, trying to look up and not to at the same time, and feeling giddy, shaky, and pulled it loose and flipped it past her onto the bank. He said: You ought not to wade barefooted .

He had felt for a minute that he wasn’t even afraid of her any more and all he could remember now was running. The huge expanse of flesh and the bloomers and her holding him by the collar with her feet somehow in the water on either side of him until he jerked away with his shirt ripping loudly and splashed back through the creek to the bank and out and across Saunders’ field shedding water and minnows from his bucket with the foolish little seine still in his hand and water squishing in his shoes, running .