Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

Oh.

Sylder had leaned back against the concrete wall and was tapping a cigarette from its package. Ain’t that a hell of a note? he said.

I’ll get him.

Hmm?

I’m goin to get the son of a bitch.

What! That old fart? Why I’ll be dipped in … Then he said Oh.

That’s right, the boy said. The deacon.

The smile had fallen from Sylder’s face. Wait a minute, he said. You don’t get nobody.

Him, the boy said.

No, Sylder said. He was looking very hard at the boy but the boy knew he was in the right.

Why? he said.

You jest stay away from Jefferson Gifford, that’s all.

You hear?

You jest think I’ll get in trouble, the boy said. That I …

Stubborn little bastard, ain’t you? Look.

Sylder paused, he seemed to be trying to think of something, a word perhaps. Look, he said, what’s between him and me is between him and me. It don’t need nobody else. So I thank ye kindly but no thank ye, you don’t owe me nothin and I ain’t crippled. I’ll tend to my own Giffords. All right?

The boy didn’t answer, didn’t seem to be listening. Sylder lit the cigarette and watched him. He turned and looked once at Sylder and then he seemed to remember something and he reached into the watchpocket of his jeans and took out two folded dollar bills and handed them to him.

What’s that? Sylder said.

The two dollars I owe you. That you loant me for traps.

Naw … Sylder started. Then he stopped and looked at the boy still holding out the two dirty bills. Okay, he said. He took the money and crammed it into his shirtpocket. Okay, that makes us square.

The boy was silent for a minute. Then he said:

No.

No what?

No it don’t make us square. Because maybe I lost the traps on your account but that’s okay and I earned em back and paid for em and that’s okay … but you got beat up on my account and maybe in jail too that … and that’s why it ain’t square yet, that part of it not square.

Sylder started to reach for the money, thought better of it and sat up, grinding the cigarette out beneath his heel. Then he looked at the boy. Square be damned, he said. I ast you to stay away from Gifford, that’s all. Will you?

The boy didn’t say anything.

Swear it? Sylder said.

No.

Sylder watched him, the still childish face set with truculent purpose. Look, he said, you’re fixin to get me in worse trouble than I already am, you …

I won’t get no …

No, wait a damn minute.

He did. They sat looking at each other, the man’s face misshapen as if bee-stung, him leaning forward gaunt and huge and the boy perched delicately on the edge of the metal pallet as if loath to sit too easily where so many had lain in such hard rest.

Look, Sylder said, taking a long breath, you want to talk about square, all right. Me and Gif are square.

The boy looked at him curiously.

Yes, he said. I busted him and he busted me. That’s fair, ain’t it?

The boy was still silent, calmly incredulous.

No, Sylder went on, I ain’t forgettin about jail. You think because he arrested me that thows it off again I reckon? I don’t. It’s his job. It’s what he gets paid for. To arrest people that break the law. And I didn’t jest break the law, I made a livin at it. He leaned forward and looked the boy in the face. More money in three hours than a workin man makes in a week. Why is that? Because it’s harder work? No, because a man who makes a livin doin somethin that has to get him in jail sooner or later has to be paid for the jail, has to be paid in advance not jest for his time breakin the law but for the time he has to build when he gets caught at it. So I been paid. Gifford’s been paid. Nobody owes nobody. If it wadn’t for Gifford, the law, I wouldn’t of had the job I had blockadin and if it wadn’t for me blockadin, Gifford wouldn’t of had his job arrestin blockaders. Now who owes who?

His voice was beginning to rise and he had about him a look almost furious. But you, he went on, you want to be some kind of a goddamned hero. Well, I’ll tell ye, they ain’t no more heroes.

The boy seemed to shrink, his face flushing.

You understand that? Sylder said.

I never claimed I wanted to be no hero, the boy said sullenly.

Nobody never claimed it, Sylder said. Anyway I never done nothin on your account like you said. I don’t do nothin I don’t want to. You want to do me a favor jest stay away from Gifford. Stay away from me too. You ought not to of come here. You’ll get me charged with delinquency to a minor. Go on now.

He leaned back against the wall and stared at the emptiness before him. After a while the boy got up and went to the door and tried it, and Sylder, not looking up or speaking to the boy, called for the jailer. He heard him come and the clank of keys, the cell door grating open. Then quiet. He looked up. The boy was standing in the doorway, half turned, looking at him with a wan smile, puzzled, like one who aspires to disbelief in the face of immutable fact. Sylder lifted one hand in farewell. Then the door clanged to.

He sat up, half rose from the cot, would call him back to say That’s not true what I said. It was a damned lie ever word. He’s a rogue and a outlaw hisself and you’re welcome to shoot him, burn him down in his bed, any damn thing, became he’s a traitor to boot and maybe a man steals from greed or murders in anger but he sells his own neighbors out for money and it’s few lie that deep in the pit, that far beyond the pale .

Softly and with slow grace her leathered footpads fell, hind tracking fore with a precision profoundly feline, a silken movement where her shoulders rolled, haunches swayed. Belly swaying slightly too, lean but pendulous. Head low and divorced of all but linear motion, as if fixed along an unseen rail. A faint musty odor still clung to her, odor of the outhouse where she had slept all day, restless in the heat and languishing among the dusty leaves in the corner, listening to the dry scratch and slither of roaches, the interstitial boring of wood-beetles. Now she came down the patch obscure with parched weeds shedding thin blooms of sifting dust where she brushed them. At dusk-dark from her degenerate habitation, emerging to make her way down the narrow patch as cats go.

She passed through the honeysuckles by a dark tunnel where the earth still held moisture, down the bank to a culvert by which she crossed beneath the road and came into a field and into a dry gully, the cracked and curling clay like a paving of potsherds, and turned up an artery of the wash, grown here with milkweed and burdock, following a faint aura of vole or shrew, until she came to a small burrow in the grasses. She scratched at the matted whorl, caved it in and trod it down, moved on across the field, crickets scuttling, grasshoppers springing from their weed-stems and whirring away. A shadow passed soundlessly overhead, perhaps a flock of late-returning birds.

Near the center of the field was a single walnut tree bedded in a crop of limestone which had so far fended it against axe and plowshare. Among these rocks she nosed, in their small labyrinths undulant as a ferret. Odor of walnuts and ground squirrels. But she found nothing.

When she left the rocks, was clear of the overreaching branches of the tree, there grew about her a shadow in the darkness like pooled ink spreading, a soft-hissing feathered sound which ceased even as she half turned, saw unbelieving the immense span of wings cupped downward, turned again, already squalling when the owl struck her back like a falling rock.

Mr Eller closed the lionheaded door behind him and rattled the latch to see that it was secure. Then he checked the plaited fob on the notecase in his hip pocket, adjusted his straw hat, and started up the road toward the house. At the mailbox he was arrested by the high thin wail of a cat coming apparently from straight overhead. He looked up but there were no trees there. He shook his head and went on, stepping carefully in the gutted drive. The squall sounded once more, this time more distant and to the ridge of pines behind the house. He continued on, to the porch where a yellow bulb held forth its dull steadfast light, to a place of surcease.