Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

A Plymouth? he repeated.

Legwater was buttoning his coat. That’s what he said. I ain’t been down there. All I know is he said it was a Plymouth. He come straight to my place on account of it was on his milk route and he ast for me to call you. So I jest come on over. He said it was a Plymouth.

Gifford adjusted his hat and opened the door. Well, come on, he said. I sure never heard of nobody hauling whiskey in a Plymouth.

Ain’t you goin to call the Sheriff?

Reckon I’ll see what all it is I’m callin him about first, Gifford said.

They parked the car just beyond the creek and climbed through the wire fence and walked along slow, studying the swath the car had cut through the brush and small trees. It had cleared the fence completely, peeling a limb from a cottonwood that grew by the bridge, and come to earth some thirty feet from the road. It was upside down in the creek against the far bank and facing back the way it came. Gifford couldn’t see anything yet but the undercarriage, but he knew it wasn’t a Ford this time by the two semi-elliptic springs at the rear axle. They had to go back to the road and cross the bridge to get to the car. It was smashed up against some roots on the bank and they could see the glass leaking from the trunk lid.

Later when they got a truck down and winched the wreck out the lid fell off and glass poured into the creek — someone said later for thirty minutes — for a long time anyway. There were even two or three jars unbroken, which pleased Gifford — evidence, he said …

It was a Plymouth, a 33 coupe; there was a hole in the right front tire you could put three fingers in. Other than that there was nothing remarkable about it except that it was wrecked in Red Branch with the remains of a load of whiskey in the back end.

Gifford examined the ground carefully, walking back and forth along the bank as if he had lost something there. He had written the license number down on a slip of paper but on looking closer saw that they were last year’s plates repainted and threw the paper away in disgust.

Looks to me like he’d of been hurt, Legwater was saying. They.

They what?

Them, Gifford said. They’s two of em.

You mean tracks? Them’s most likely Oliver’s; he come down to see was they anybody hurt …

Cept he never clumb down into the creek to … See? Here … Gifford paused, staring at the ground. After a long minute he looked up at Legwater. Earl, he said, I reckon you’re right.

Figured I was …

Yep. The othern wadn’t in the car. He jest come along and got whoever was in out.

It wadn’t Oliver, Legwater persisted. He never even seen nobody around when he come by. He …

Ain’t talkin about him, the constable said. Come on, if you’re ready.

It had begun to rain a little by then.

Believe it may warm up for a spell, Gifford said. If it don’t turn snow.

In the store the old men gathered, occupying for endless hours the creaking milkcases, speaking slowly and with conviction upon matters of profound inconsequence, eying the dull red bulb of the stove with their watery vision. Shrouded in their dark coats they had a vulturous look about them, their faces wasted and thin, their skin dry and papery as a lizard’s. John Shell, looking like nothing so much as an ill-assembled manikin of bones on which clothes were hung in sagging dusty folds, his wrists protruding like weathered sticks from his flapping prelate sleeves, John Shell unhinged his toothless jaw with effort, a slight audible creaking sound, to speak his one pronouncement: It ain’t so much that as it is one thing’n another.

An assemblage of nods to this. In the glass cases roaches scuttled, a dry rattling sound as they traversed the candy in broken ranks, scaled the glass with licoriced feet, their segmented bellies yellow and flat. Summer and winter they patrolled the candy case, inspected handkerchiefs, socks, cigars. Occasionally too they invaded the meat case, a medicinal white affair rusted from sweat where the lower edge of the glass was mortised, so that brown stains like tobacco spit or worse seeped down the enamel, but they soon perished here from the cold. Their corpses lay in attitudes of repose all along the little scupper to the front of the case.

Leaning against the case John Wesley could see the car pull in alongside the rusty orange gas pump and the two men get out. When they came through the door the nasal clacking voices paused, the chorus of elders looking up, down, back to the stove. Some fumbled knives from their overalls and fell to whittling idly on their milkcases. John Shell struggled to his feet, opened the stove door with kerchiefed hand, dropped in a small chunk of coal from the hod. A draft of sparks scurried upwards. He spat assertively at them and clanked the loose iron door closed.

The two men crossed to the dope box in close order, on the raw subflooring their steps heavy and martial. They selected their drinks and the taller man came over to the counter and spun down a dime. The other one closed the lid and hiked himself up on the box where he sat taking little sips of his drink and smirking strangely at the old men.

John Shell turned to the man at the counter and said, Howdy, Gif.

Howdy, said Gifford, nodding in general to the group. He took a drink of his dope.

Mr Eller came from his chair by the meat block and rang up the dime. Gifford said Howdy to him too and he grunted and went back to his chair taking with him a newspaper from the counter.

Warmin up, Gifford said. Outside the rain had stopped and a cold wind feathered the red water puddles in front of the store. He tilted his head and drank again. A fly rattled electrically against the front window. The fire cricked and moaned in the stove.

Gifford hoisted his dope to eye-level, examined it, his mouth pursed about the unswallowed liquid, swirling the bottle slowly, studying viscosity and bead, suspicious of foreign matter. In the folds of flesh beneath his chin his Adam’s apple rose and fell.

See where somebody lost a old Plymouth down in the creek, he said.

A few looked up. That a fact, someone said.

Yessir, said Gifford. Seems a shame.

Legwater, the county humane officer, finished now with his drink, sat leaning forward, hands palm-downward, sitting on his fingers — an attitude toadlike but for his thinness and the spindle legs dangling over the side of the box. He was swinging them out, banging his heels against the drink case. A longlegged and emaciated toad, then. He kept leering and smirking but no one paid him any attention. Most of the old men had been there the day he shot two dogs behind the store with a.22 rifle, one of them seven times, it screaming and dragging itself along the fence in the field below the forks while a cluster of children stood watching until they too began screaming.

He said, Sure does … brightly, enjoying himself.

Gifford passed him a sharp glance sideways and he hushed and fell to watching his heels bounce.

I don’t reckon anybody knows whose car that is, do they, Gifford went on.

A few of the elders seemed to be dozing. The fly buzzed at the glass.

I got a towtruck comin to take it on in to town. Sure would like to get that car to the rightful owner.

What kind of car did you say it was? It was the boy leaning against the meat case who spoke.

Gif drained the last of his dope with studied indifference, set the bottle carefully on the counter. He looked at the boy, then he looked at the boy’s feet.

You always wear them slippers, son?

The boy didn’t look down. He started to answer, but he could feel the cords in his throat sticking. He coughed and cleared his throat noisily. His feet felt huge.

Them ain’t enough shoes for wet weather, Gifford said. Then he was moving across the floor. Legwater eased himself down from the drink box and fell in behind him. At the door Gif stopped, the door half open, studying something obliquely overhead. Yessir, he said, looks like it’s fixin to clear off. Legwater hovered behind him like some dark and ominous bird.