Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

But he didn’t even feel it. When he came up again he was in water past his waist, the soft creek floor squirming away beneath his feet as if he were walking the bodies of a colony of underwater creatures clustered there. He could see a little better now. There was no light on the bank and he thought: I come down too far. And no voices, only the sounds of the creek chattering and rocking past all around him. Then he went in again, over his head this time, and came up treading water and with something heavy pushing against his chest. He got his arms under it and lifted. Lady’s head came up and her eyes rolled at him dumbly. He reached and got hold of her collar, the creek bottom coming up and sliding off under his feet, falling backwards now with the dog rolling over him and beginning to struggle, until his leg hit a rock and he reached for it and steadied himself and rose again and began to flounder shoreward with the dog in tow.

They came with the light and Sylder looked at him huddled in the willows, still holding the dog. He didn’t say anything, just disappeared into the woods, returning in a few minutes with a pile of brush and dead limbs.

One of the men was kneeling with him and stroking the dog, examining her. She looks all right, he said, don’t she, son?

He couldn’t get his mouth open so he just nodded. He was beyond cold now, paralyzed.

The other man said: Son, you goin to take your death. We better get you home fore you freeze settin right there.

He nodded again. He wanted to get up but he couldn’t bear the rub of his clothes where he moved.

Sylder had the fire going by then, a great crackling sound as the dry brush took, orange light leaping among the trees. He could see him in silhouette moving about, feeding the blaze. Then he came back. He gathered the quivering hound up in one arm and motioned for the boy to follow. You come over here, he said. And get them clothes off.

He got up then and labored stiffly after them.

Sylder put the hound by the fire and turned to the boy. Lemme have that coat, he said.

The boy peeled off the leaden mackinaw and handed it over to him. He passed it around the trunk of a sapling, gathered the ends up in his hands and twisted what looked to be a gallon of water out of the loose wool. Then he hung it over a bush. When he looked back the boy was still standing there.

Get em off, he said.

He started pulling his clothes off, the man taking from him in turn shirt and trousers, socks and drawers, wringing them out and hanging them over a pole propped on forks before the fire. When he was finished he stood naked, white as a slug in the cup of firelight. Sylder took off his coat and threw it to him.

Put it on, he said. And get your ass over here in front of the fire.

The two men were behind him in the woods; he could hear them crashing about, see the wink of their light. One of them came back toting a huge log and dropped it on the fire. A flurry of sparks ascended, flared, lost in the smoke pulling at the bare limbs overhead, returned tracing their slow fall redly through the dark trees downwind.

He sat in a trampled matting of vines, the long coat just covering his buttocks. Sylder made a final adjustment to the pole and came over. He lit a cigarette and stood regarding him.

Kind of cool, ain’t it? he said.

The boy looked up at him. Cool enough, he said.

The clothes had begun to steam, looking like some esoteric game quartered and smoking on the spit. Then he said, What’d you do with the coon?

Coon?

Yeah. The coon.

Goddamn, the boy said, I never saw the coon.

Oh, Sylder said. But his voice was giving him away. Hell, I figured you’d of got the coon too.

Shoo, the boy said. Over his teeth the firelight rippled and danced.

The two men were warming their hands at the fire, the shorter one grinning goodnaturedly at the boy. The other hound had appeared, hovering suddenly at the rim of light and snuffling at the steaming wool and then slouching past them with nervous indifference, the slack hound grace, to where Lady lay quietly peering across her paws into the fire. He nosed at her and she raised her head to look at him with her sad red eyes. He stood so for a minute, looking past her, then stepped neatly over her and melted silently into the black wickerwork of the brush. The other man moved over to her and reached down to pat her head. One ear was mangled and crusting with blood.

Coon’s hard on a walker, he said. Walker’s got too much heart. Old redbone like that — he motioned toward the blackness that encircled them — he’ll quit if it gets too rough. Little old walker though — he addressed the dog now — she jest got too much heart, ain’t she?

When Sylder let him out of the car his clothes were still wet. You better scoot in there fast, he told him. Your maw raise hell with you?

Naw, he said, she’ll be asleep.

Well, Sylder said. We’ll go again. You got to stay out of the creek though. Here, I got to get on. My old lady’ll be standin straight up.

All right, we’ll see ye. He let the door fall.

Night, Sylder said. The car pulled away trailing ropy plumes of smoke, the one red taillight bobbing. He turned toward the house, lightless and archaic among the crumbling oaks, crossed the frosted yard. His shadow swept upward to the lean-to roof, dangled from a limb, upward again, laced with branches, stood suddenly upon the roof. He slid downward over the eaves and disappeared in the black square of the gable window.

Some time after midnight on the twenty-first of December it began to snow. By morning in the gray spectral light of a brief and obscure winter sun the fields lay deadwhite and touched with a phosphorous glow as if producing illumination of themselves, and the snow was still wisping down thickly, veiling the trees beyond the creek and the mountain itself, falling softly, and softly, faintly sounding in the immense white silence.

On that morning the old man rose early and stared long out at the little valley. Nothing moved. The snow fell ceaselessly. When he pushed the screendoor it dragged heavily in the drifts packed on the porch and against the house. He stood there in his shirtsleeves watching the great wafers of snow list and slide, dodging the posts at the corner of the house. It was very cold. The hiss of the coffeepot boiling over on the stove brought him in again.

All day it darkened so that when night came no one could tell just when it had come about. Yet the snow fell, undiminished. Windless, pillowed in silence, down-sifting … No one was about. All the dogs were quiet. In his house the old man lit a lamp and settled back in a stout rocker near the stove. He selected a magazine from a rack alongside, an ancient issue of Field and Stream , limp and worn, the pages soft as chamois, spread it on his lap and began to leaf through it who knew it now almost by heart — stories, pictures, advertisements. From time to time he could hear scuffling sounds beneath him, scratchings in the darkness under the floor where Scout turned uneasily in his nest of rotting sacks.

He turned the pages for a while and then got up and went to the kitchen where from a high cupboard above the tapless sink he fetched down a molasses jar near filled with a viscous brickcolored liquid opaque as clay. He screwed off the cap, took a clean jelly jar from the sideboard and poured it full. Then he went back to his chair, settled the drink on its broad arm, adjusted the magazine in his lap and began to rock gently back and forth, the liquid in the glass lapping sluggishly with the motion. Now and again he took a sip, staining the white stubble beneath his lip a deep maroon. The oil-lamp glowed serenely at its image, a soft corolla, inflaming the black window-glass where a curled and withered spider dangled from a dusty thread.