Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

Old Bill, he backed off some, said that old she-painter might be around. Well, I was younger’n him and likely didn’t have as good sense, so in I goes and grabs the little feller up by the scruff of the neck. That’s when he hung his tushes in my thumb here. I turnt loose right fast, I’ll tell ye. Well, I figured a minute, and then I took off my shirt and scotched him up in that and brought him on home with me.

Here the old man paused and helped himself to a chew of tobacco from a huge paper pouch. I lived five mile this side of Sevierville then, he continued. I — you boys don’t chew, do ye? no — I had bought me a place off a man named Delozier — twenty acres, mostly sidehill and not much of a house neither, a old piece of a barn … I was married then and that was my first place so I reckon I was kindly what you might say proud of it. I kep some hogs and chickens and later on I had me a cow and a wore-out mule, put me in some corn … I never had nothin, ain’t got nothin now, but I figured it was a start. I wadn’t a whole lot older’n you fellers, nineteen, I think I was. But anyway what I was fixin to tell was about that painter. I brought him on home and give him to Ellen. She took to it right off, kep it in a box and give it milk and sech as that. It got to where it’d folly her around the house like a everday walkin-around cat. It wadn’t but about the size of a cat too … I recollect he’s speckled kindly like a bobcat. Well, they’s even a feller come out from the newspaper and wrote it up about us havin him; folks come from pret-near everwhere to see him.

I reckon it was about two weeks we’d had him when one evenin I heard one of the hogs squeal. I got the lannern and went out but I couldn’t find nothin wrong and went on back in and never thought no more about it. Well, next mornin they’s a hog gone. I hadn’t never heard of nobody stealin hogs but I figured maybe they’s hog thieves jest like ary other kind, up in Sevier County leastwise as that was purty woolly country at that time. But they wadn’t a whole lot I could do about it, not knowin where to even start lookin. Then two nights later anothern of em went. Well, I says, they gettin slicker now. The secont one never even squealt.

Next night I laid up on the roof of the house with the shotgun — a old single-barrel muzzleloader and me with not enough money to buy caps with even — I was usin matchheads and cottonseed hulls — and here’s somebody stealin my hogs. So I laid up there all night, no further’n from here to the porch yonder from that hogpen. I never seed nothin nor heard nothin. Come mornin I never even looked at the hogs even. Then when she, Ellen, went out later on and slopped em she come back in and she says, Ather, they’s another hog gone.

I was settin in a chair about half asleep and I come from there. I don’t recollect how many hogs it was that we had but seven or eight I reckon anyway, and I run out and counted em and come up short one more hog. I’d been mad afore but now I was scared.

Here the old man found the cup of wine in his hand and he regarded it for a moment with mild surprise, raised it and took a drink. He closed his eyes for a moment,

the high wagon and them coming up to the house, wagon and house both belonging to his uncle, and him owning nothing more than he could carry in his two hands, her things in an old leather trunk tied down behind the seat .

That her? he asked .

Yessir .

He walked around the wagon slowly, studying her as a man might a horse. Then he said, Well, light .

He got down and she was still sitting there .

What’s she? goin to put the mule up?

Nosir, he said. Ellen. Here .

He took her hand and she got down .

You go on with Uncle Whitney, he said. I’ll get the things .

Helen, he said .

It’s Ellen, she said. The wagon moved away behind her .

Ellen .

Daddy said he’d kill him, she said .

Ain’t nobody goin to kill nobody, he said. Here, watch the mud .

She said something else. He watched them go in .

What happent then, Uncle Ather, Warn said.

Hmm? Oh, well I’d done lost three of them I think it was then. That was three more’n I was willin to lose and two more’n I thought I would lose without I caught somebody. Aside that it looked like I would lose jest as many as whoever I was losin em to was willin to take, which probably meant all of them. So I was mad-scared. Ellen, she claimed I’d gone to sleep on the roof, but I knowed better.

That was late of a summer. I was stit on the road crew and workin twelve and fourteen hours a day and here I got to come home nights and set up with a bunch of hogs. But we never lost no more for a week or better. Then one night Ellen went to the door to thow out a pan of water and I heard her holler. I run out and she grabbed on to me like she’d seen a hant or somethin, and I ast her what it was but she jest stood there and shook like she’s freezin to death. I walked her back in and went out and looked but I never seen nothin, so I got the pan and come on in. Somethin had scared her real bad but she couldn’t tell me what all it was. After a while all she’d say was I don’t know , or I couldn’t tell what it was .

The old man paused again, arrested but for the rise and fall of his breathing, the slow mechanical rotation of his jaws, gazed upward — the image of the lampflame on the ceiling, the split corona a doubling egg, like the parthenogenesis of primal light.

He kept on for a week, coming back each night to the dark and empty house. Then he stopped going to work. That morning he took out the few things she had left — a housecoat, odds and ends, and put them on the bed. He sat and looked at them for a long time. When he got up it was evening .

He stayed for five more days, wandering about the house or sitting motionless, sleeping in chairs, eating whatever he happened to find until there wasn’t any more and then not eating anything. While the chickens grew thin and the stock screamed for water, while the hogs perished to the last shoat. An outrageous stench settled over everything, a vile decay that hung in the air, filled the house .

On the sixth day he went out and knocked a plank from the back of the barn with the poll of his axe, cut from it two boards. On one he carefully incised her name with the point of his knife. Then he chopped a stake-point on the other board and nailed the two together in the form of a cross. He took it and took her clothes and a spade down to a corner of the lot where he scooped a hole, buried the clothes, and with the shank of the spade pounded the cross into the ground. Then he walked straight through the house and out again, across the yard, to the road and toward Sevierville. He had gone half a mile before he noticed the shovel in his hand and pitched it into the weeds .

I know you cain’t, he said .

I ain’t goin back .

I’ll go out tomorrow. Corne on, you clean up and eat some .

What?

And get some rest, sleep. I’ll go out tomorrow .

Well, you can. I ain’t .

I was goin out anyways. R. L. come by yesterday mornin to see if you was comin back. You goin back?

I don’t know. No. I ain’t goin back .

You aim to sell your place?

It don’t… I don’t care .

Well. I do .

He looked at him for the first time, the older face, dark and hard as a walnut. Why? he asked .

Count of you owe me two hunderd dollars, mainly .

Oh. He thought for a minute, then he said, Yes. Here, I got to clean up .