Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

Well, he said, kindly early, yes.

You come up from Walland this mornin I reckon?

No, the old man said, Knoxville.

I mean on foot, comin up the mountain …

I come straight acrost, the old man said.

They looked at each other. The tall one hesitated a moment, then he said: You say you goin to the Harrykin?

Aim to, the old man said.

Cain’t say as it seems like much of a place to jest go to, he said. I’ve knowed one or two people at different times what was there and would of give some to of been away from it though. Daddy I remember would leave dogs treed there of a night rather’n go in after em. He said they was places you could walk fer half a mile thout ever settin foot to the ground — jest over laurel hells and down timber, and a rattlesnake to the log … I never been there myself.

You aimin to stay there long? the other one asked.

But before the old man could answer that, the woman thrust her face through the door and announced breakfast. Both men rose instantly and started for the kitchen, then paused, remembering the old man still seated with the slow words forming on his lips. They had the uneasy look of boys sneaking to table with dirty hands. The old man stood and walked between them, the shorter one smiling a sort of half-smile and saying: I reckon we jest about forgot how to act, ain’t we?

Pshaw, said the old man.

At the foot of the mountain the old man found himself in a broad glade grown thick with rushes, a small stream looping placidly over shallow sands stippled with dace shadows, the six-pointed stars of skating waterspiders drifting like bright frail medusas. He squatted and dipped a palmful of water to his lips, watched the dace drift and shimmer. Scout waded past him, elbow-deep into the stream, lapped at it noisily. Strings of red dirt receded from his balding hocks, marbling in the water like blood. The dace skittered into the channel and a watersnake uncurled from a rock at the far bank and glided down the slight current, no more demonstrative of effort or motion than a flute note.

The old man drank and then leaned back against the sledge. The glade hummed softly. A woodhen called from the timber on the mountain and to that sound of all summer days of seclusion and peace the old man slept.

Yessir, the storekeeper said. Yessir, now I believe I do recollect who tis. You some kin of hisn?

No, the man said. No kin. Jest somethin I got to see him about.

He was dressed in clean gray chinos and had a neat felt hat tipped back on his head. Huffaker stole a look out the window to where his car was parked at the side of the porch, a plain black Ford, a late model.

The man saw him look, watched the glint of suspicion narrow the storekeeper’s eyes.

Well, Huffaker said, I couldn’t tell you offhand where-all you might find him at. He lives up yander somewheres — a random gesture at the brooding hills that cupped in the valley.

He trade here? the man wanted to know.

Well, I couldn’t? rightly say he did, nosir. Not regular at all. I ain’t seen him in here but once or twicet and that’s back several week ago. He’s a right funny old feller, don’t have no money at all I don’t reckon.

What’d he buy then?

Well, he got him some backer and a sack of corn-meal. Little sidemeat last time he’s in.

He got credit?

Well, no. I don’t give out a whole lot of credit. He brings in sang. Ginseng roots. Had some goldenseal too but it ain’t worth a whole lot. I give trade on that.

Roots?

Yessir, Huffaker said. I send em off to St. Louis. Same place as I send hides.

The man looked puzzled but he didn’t ask any more about that.

You from around here? the storekeeper asked.

From over t’wards Maryville.

Oh, Huffaker said. I got kin over there myself.

He still got that dog?

Who’s that?

The old feller … the one …

Oh. Yessir, did have one with him. A old redbone looked like he’d been drug half to death or warshed in lye one. Didn’t have no hair hardly at all. Right pitiful-lookin, like.

Well, the man said, you say you don’t know where-all he lives at?

Nosir, I shore don’t.

Well, much obliged.

Yessir. You come back.

He did. He came every day for seven days.

He was there next morning early among the un-churched Sunday idlers, hovering on the edge of the circle they formed about the fireless stove, their conviviality so broken by his presence that they took on the look of refugees grimly awaiting bulletins of some current disaster, the news of flood or fire or plague. From time to time he got a drink from the box and stood sipping it, hand on hip, gazing up at the phantasmagoria of merchandise hung about the ceiling beams. Or peered solemnly out the window, beyond the river and the narrow bridge to where a broad green hollow rose and rose into the mountains.

Monday when Huffaker came down he was not there yet but half an hour later when he went out to unlock the gas pump the car was parked on the gravel ramp approaching the store and the man was perched upon the fender in the same creased and tireless clothes sipping coffee from a paper cup. The sun was coming up behind him and to the west fog was breaking, lifting off the slopes to leave the laurel balds burning with the fierce green light of morning. The man was watching again, the peaks across the river, as if with those slategray eyes he might mark out an old man and a hound somewhere on the face of a mountain not less than four miles distant.

When Huffaker let the door to, the man turned. He lifted a palm in greeting and the man nodded. He went down to the pump and undid the lock.

Looks like another purty day, don’t it? he called.

Does at that, the man said. He drained the coffee and pitched the cup away, got down from the fender and took a few steps up and down the gravel, stretching himself. Huffaker returned to the store.

Around eleven o’clock he came in, nodding once again to the proprietor. He bought a box of soda crackers and some cheese, looked for a long time at the cake rack and finally took a moonpie. He laid his lunch on the counter and Huffaker began to total it laboriously on a scratch pad, adding the figures aloud.

And a quart of sweet milk, the man said.

He put that down, then went to the cooler and brought back the milk in a quart mason jar. The man looked at it, turned it around on the counter.

That’s Mrs Walker’s milk, he reassured the man. It’s good as ever you drunk, garntee ye.

The man nodded and pulled a clip of bills from his pocket.

Forty-five cents, Huffaker said.

He paid it and went out on the porch where he sat back against a post and ate his lunch. After he had finished he squatted there a long time smoking cigarettes. Then he brought the jar back inside and set it on the counter. Huffaker took it out again and washed it under the tap at the side of the building. Some customers were coming up toward the store and he waved at them and went in.

Later on in the afternoon the man came in again and drank a Coca-Cola. Before he went back out to his car he asked Huffaker what time it was that the old man usually came in.

The old feller?

The one I was astin you about.

Oh. Well, times he come in it was genly of a mornin. But then he don’t come regular enough for me to say when a feller be most likely to expect him.

Light gained on the high peaks and in the dawn quiet first birdcalls fell like water on stone. In the wood mists like old gray spirits paled and scattered, by moss coverlets the dark earth stirred and nightfurled wild-flowers unbent their withered fronds all down the path where came the derelict hound shambling along in an aureole of its own incredibility, the old man picking his steps over the schist and quartz chines, his hex-cane bobbing lightly on his shoulder, carrying a limp and greasy paper bag of the curious twisted roots with which he bartered. They crossed a broad rock slide emblazoned with sun and threaded by a trickle of water in a rock channel rusted copper-dark. The old man paused to scale a slate down into the gorge where trees lay tossed and broken. The dog peered down, looked at the old man inquisitively, studied the empty gorge again and then moved on, the old man taking up his cane and following. The sole of his brogan was all but off now and he limped, favoring the odd shoe to save the binder twine with which he had tied it together.