Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

By full dark he had left the tracks and turned into the woods to the south, feeling out the path with his feet, shivering a little now in his wet clothes. They came past the old quarry, the tiered and graceless monoliths of rock alienated up out of the earth and blasted into ponderous symmetry, leaning, their fluted faces pale and recumbent among the trees, like old temple ruins. They went silently along over the trace of the quarry road, the sledge whispering, the gaunt dog padding, past the quarryhole with its vaporous green waters and into the woods again, the limestone white against the dark earth, a populace of monstrous slugs dormant in a carbon forest. Groups of trees turned slowly like masted carousels, blending shadows and parting in darkness and wonder. The rain stopped falling. They passed, leaving a trail of foxfire shuffled up out of the wet leaves like stars plowed in a ship’s wake.

Morning found them on the south slope of Chilhowee Mountain, the dog buckled down on top of the sledge now and the old man pulling them tree by tree up the steep and final rise. From his high place on the slope he could see the first strawcolored light sourceless beyond the earth’s curve, the horizon warped in a glaucous haze. An hour later and they had gained the crest of the mountain and stood in a field of broom sedge bright as wheat, treeless but for a broken chestnut the color of stone.

The sun was up by then and the old man rested, leaning against the tree. After a while he fell asleep, the sledge’s painter still wrapped in his blistered hand. The dog stretched out in the sun too, wrinkling his ragged hide at the flies. Far below them shades of cloud moved up the valley floor like water flowing, darkened the quilted purlieus, moved on, the brushed land gone green and umber once again. The clouds broke against the mountain, coral-edged and bent to the blue curve of the sky. A butterfly struggled, down through shells of light, down to the gold and seagreen tree tips …

The old man came awake late in the afternoon and ate some cold cornbread, sharing it with the hound. He did not eat much and the cornbread was enough. Then he started down the mountain, trucking behind him his sorry chattel, picking a course through the small trees and laurel jungles. Some time after midnight he came out on a road and turned south along it, crossed a wooden bridge, a purling clearwater stream, climbed with the road into the mountains again, the sledge drifting easily behind him and the hound plodding.

The light at the house the old man came to that morning he could see a good while before he got to it. He caught glimpses of it once or twice somewhere on the ridge above him as he was coming through a mountain meadow, a huge pool in the darkness swept with the passing shadows of nightbirds, but he had no way of knowing that the road would take him there. He didn’t see the light again until he topped the hill where the house stood and where a section of road was banded out of the night in a tunnel of carlights. Some men were talking and he could hear the sound of the motor running.

He kept on, into the light. The voices stopped. The old man looked up at them, two men leaning against the side of the automobile, another seated inside. He didn’t stop. They faded behind the glare of the headlights, reappeared filmily, not moving, watching him. With the lights out of his eyes the old man stopped and nodded to them. Howdy, he said.

You ain’t lost, are ye?

Don’t reckon, he said.

One of them said something. The car eased down the drive, the two men walking alongside. The man in the car leaned out toward him. This road don’t go thew, he said. It jest loops and comes on back.

How fer is it to the Harrykin? the old man wanted to know.

The man turned out the lights. The other two had come up now and said Howdy, each in turn. Scout clambered up onto the sledge and eyed them balefully.

Wants to know how fer is it to the Harrykin, the driver said.

What fer?

The other one stepped forward and eyed the old man with bland curiosity, the sledge heaped with his worthless paraphernalia and topped by the prone and wasted hound. You cain’t hardly get there from here, he said. You ort to of come thew Sunshine, crost the river there … it ain’t easy to get to from nowhere but that there’d of been a nigher cut. What you aim to do in there, cut timber?

No, said the old man. Jest fixin to put up some kind of a piece of a house and kindly settle there.

In the Harrykin?

Yessir.

Where-all you from? the man in the car wanted to know.

From t’wards Knoxville.

The man in the car was silent for a minute. Then he said, I’m goin in to Sevierville here in jest a minute. I can carry you that fer if you don’t keer to ride in a old beat-up car such as it is.

Much obliged, the old man said, but I reckon I’ll jest get on.

Well, the man said. He turned to the other two. I got to get, myself, he said. We’ll see yins.

They nodded. You come back. The car eased away, the lights coming on again, rattled out of sight down the road. The old man had the sledge rope in hand and was saying a goodbye to the men.

You best come on in and have some breakfast with us, one of them said.

Much obliged, the old man said, but I reckon I’ll jest be gettin on.

Might as well eat some with us, the other said. We jest fixin to. Well, the old man said. If you-all don’t care.

The house the old man entered that morning was no shotgun shack but a mountain cabin of squared logs rent deeply with weather-checks and chinked with clay. It was long and saddle-bowed, divided into two rooms of equal size, and at the far end of one a fireplace of river rock, rocks tumbled smooth as eggs, more ancient than the river itself. From a door to the right a woman’s face peered at them furtively as they sat, the taller of the men motioning the old man to a chair cut from a buttertub and padded in hair-worn cowhide. They produced tobacco and papers and passed them to him not ceremoniously but with that deprecatory gesture of humility which country people confer in a look, a lift of the hand. The old man began to feel right homey.

Say you from t’wards Knoxville? the tall man said.

Yessir, he answered, taping down the paper of his cigarette.

I got a sister lives over thataway. Meanest kids I ever seen. Married a boy from Mead’s Quarry — you know where that’s at?

Shore, the old man said. I come from Red Mountain my ownself. We used to whup Mead’s Quarry boys of a Sunday afternoon jest to keep a hand in.

The man grinned. That’s what he told me about you-all, he said.

Then the old man grinned.

The other one broke in. Don’t reckon you’d keer fer a little drink this early of a mornin?

Not lessen you fellers is fixin to have one.

He disappeared through the door into the lean-to and presently came back with a mason jar. Less see if this here is the one I wanted, he said, tilting it, watching the slow-rising chain of beads. He took off the cap and stretched a draught down his lean corded neck, swallowed deep, cocked his head in a listening attitude, then passed the jar to the old man. That’s the one, he said. It’s right good drinkin whiskey.

The old man accepted the jar and took a good drink. His legs were beginning to feel a little heavy and he lifted first one and then the other, slightly, testing their weight. He raised the jar again, drank and handed it back to the man. Now that’s a right nice little whiskey, he said.

The two men relayed the jar between them and then it was capped and set on the floor. The shorter man was looking out the tiny window. Gettin daylight, he said.

He turned to the old man. You get a right early start, don’t ye?

The old man recrossed his legs, taking a look out himself.