Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

Jimmy, he called, a hoarse whisper as if someone might hear them. Ho, Jimmy .

It was dark in the compartment except for the skittering glow of the searchlight passing and repassing the portholes, the portholes in bright silhouette wandering back and forth on the far wall .

Hey, kid. What you say?

Jimenez standing in the passageway. The tiller momentarily abandoned, the craft tilting full throttle across the water, the pulsing slap slap of it under the keel .

I’m shot, he said .

Jimenez holding the flashlight while he removed the shredded shoe, the sock sticky with blood, examined the pulpy mess of his big toe .

Where else, Mario?

I reckon that’s it, he said .

Jimmy patting his shoulder commiseratingly. Is hard on the feets that, he said .

They went forward and he wrapped his toe in a strip torn from his shirt and sat there miserably, watching Jimenez’s face green and serious in the glow of the panel lights .

He drove slowly, coming through the gap with the moon riding low over the pines that edged the long and barren slash of white beneath the power line, icefog coming up from the hollow, scintillant in the lights. Here where the inn stood, the carnival atmosphere with the few cars strung alongside the road, the heat flickering over them and the men standing about passing the last of the bottles back and forth, talking quietly now, their faces flushed and convivial. Some late arrivals claimed the blaze to have been visible from Vestal. Someone saying You done missed it, Marion .

Was it a good’n?

Best you ever seen .

Nothin to be done there. A drink of whiskey, sneaking it now, Gifford having arrived. Gifford with a long pole poking steaming holes in the melt of glass. Gloop gloop. Vitreous tar. Damndest thing I ever seen. One brogan toe began to blister and blacken and a moment later he was hopping away snatching at his shoelaces. Goddamn. Whew. Leaning against a tree with his naked foot cradled in his hands like a hurt bird he dared a snicker with fierce eyes .

And two days later the charred shaft of the pine tree still smoldering, pitch bubbling gently from the shell of the bark and small electricblue flames seeping and curling, the spire of smoke standing straight up in the motionless air like a continuation of the tree itself .

On the curve below the gap the rear wheels drifted slightly and he realized that there was a thin sheet of ice on the road. He sat up over the wheel and wiped the glass with a rag. He passed Tipton’s, the lights above the road warm and friendly-looking through the trees. Old married men. Sylder chuckled, reached for his cigarettes. He was the nicest boy … the rain peening steadily the tin roof of the church, obelisks of light slanting down from the high windows like buttresses. After the creak of the door nothing but the huge breathing silence, musty odor, the patient and quiet abandonment, chairs, benches, the pulpit, all orderly and still in their coats of dust, an air of mild surprise about them at this late visitation. Their steps ghostly on the warping boards, rousing an owl from the beams, passing over them on soundless wings, a shadow, ascending into the belfry like an ash sucked up a flue and as silently. She gripped his arm. Together to the mourners’ bench. O Lord, O Lord. Witnessed by one nightbird .

Topping the hill above the creek he came upon a half-ton truck with a horse on it, the long bland face peering down at him over the slatted tailgate with eyes luminous and round as bottlebottoms in the carlights. The truck was laboring at the hill with beetle-like industry, the gears grinding out a low whine. He watched the snow swirling over the road behind it, serpentine, white wisps like smoke on glass, eased up the shiftlever and passed them, the horse’s off eye rolling wildly, past the cab, the driver dimly lit within, puffing at a cigar, looking down at him once.

One side for the hooch man, Sylder said. New Year’s whiskey comin. Figure ten headaches to the gallon, makes … a thousand … about twelve hunderd real hat stretchers. How about that, old man?

Old man puffed his cigar, receding rearward, dimmed his lights to one dull orange globe.

He drove straight down Gay Street, halting obediently at the stoplights, gazing at the numbed traffic officers with insolent bemusement.

Howdy, Blue-boy. Keer for a drink?

Out on the west side of town he pulled into a drive and around behind an aged and ill-kept frame house. He backed the coupe up to the garage and got out, stretching a little. Two men came from the house, the kitchen, where a small window was lit. Another man came to the door and stood there leaning against the jamb, his shirttail out, smoking a cigarette and taking the air. A woman’s voice small and shrill somewhere in the house behind him: Shet the door, idjit. You raised in a barn? He didn’t move.

Howdy, Sylder, the first man said, going past him to the garage, not even looking at him.

Howdy, Sylder said.

The other one stopped. How’s the new car? he asked.

All right.

Ward says it come out of Cosby.

Could be.

Ward says it’s plenty fast. Says they blockaded the feller on the Newport highway is the only way they ever come to catch him at all.

Let’s go, Tiny, the other man called from the garage.

Sylder went to the rear of the coupe and opened the decklid. They began to unload, carrying the cases back into the garage, the car creaking and rising bit by bit until they had finished and it stood with its rear end high in the air like a cat in heat.

Sylder took a flashlight and wrench from the glove compartment, stooped by the rear wheels each in turn and lowered the car. Then he undid the chains, got in and drove off them, came back and put them in the trunk. The motor was still running and as he slid behind the wheel once more Tiny came to lean on the door.

Don’t she sound sweet though, he said.

Sylder looked up at him. That what Ward says?

Tiny grinned. Naw, he said. Seems to me that’s what McCrary said. When Ward loant him the money to buy it.

Tell Ward good cars costs good money. Even at a government auction. Or even if you done paid for em oncet.

He set the gears and ran the motor up once and Tiny-stood up. Come back, he said.

Sylder was rolling up the glass. We’ll see ye, he said, switched on the headlights and pulled away down the drive.

He drove slowly back to the mountain, past the forks and the store, the porch posts deadwhite as plaster casts of those untrimmed poles, the huge carved lion’s head in fierce cameo upon the door, the brass knocker brightly pendant from its nostrils, and the barred panes buckling in the light planeless as falling water, passing out of the glare in willowing sheets to darkness, stark and stable once again. Past his own house, dark but for the light on the porch, and then across the mountain, still slowly, pulling the grades down under the wheels easily.

The road was glazed with ice on the far side and he amused himself by drifting the coupe from curve to curve like a boat tacking. At the foot of the mountain he left Henderson Valley Road and turned right down Bay’s Mountain Road, driving on gravel now, slowing to some ten or fifteen miles an hour and finally switching off the headlights. He drove that way for half a mile, the coupe rolling ghostly over the road, black and silent against the snow. Then he turned the car around in a drive, pointing it back down the road, and got out.

He walked up the road until he came to the next drive and here he turned in, plodding through the snow to the lightless house where it brooded in a copse of trees, solitary above the empty fields, over and around it the naked branches tangled like ironwork.