Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

The mountain road brick-red of dust laced with lizard tracks, coming up through the peach orchard, hot, windless, cloistral in a silence of no birds save one vulture hung in the smokeblue void of the sunless mountainside, rocking on the high updrafts, and the road turning and gated with bullbriers waxed and green, and the green cadaver grin sealed in the murky waters of the peach pit, slimegreen skull with newts coiled in the eyesockets and a wig of moss .

The old man paused at the door, the attendant leading him by one arm through and into the room apparently against his will, peered at the boy through slotted lids as if unused to light of any intensity. He looked older than the boy remembered him. The attendant pulled him into the room, him shuffling in the old brogans with the paper-thin soles, a rasping sound on the concrete floor.

They came over to where the boy sat. Here’s your nephew, the attendant said loudly into the old man’s ear. You remember him?

The old man flashed a glint of blue eyes from deep beneath the closing lids. I reckon, he said.

The attendant pushed him down into the wicker chair next to the boy and left them, going back through the door, high squeak of crepe diminishing in the corridor. The old man sat in his chair staring across at the unrelieved spanse of whitewashed plaster.

Uncle Ather?

He turned. The boy was holding at him a huge bag of chewing tobacco.

I brought you some tobacca, he said. Beech-Nut, like you like.

The old man took it from him slowly and slid it inside his shirtfront. Thank ye, son, he said. I’m much obliged.

They sat quietly. The mowers passed again beneath the window, droning louder and then fading. Laughter and distant voices, someone crying, quite softly, like a child who is just lonely.

Kindly warmin up a little, ain’t it? the old man said.

We had a little rain out to the mountain, the boy said. Sunday week I believe it was.

Yes, the old man said. Well, be little of it this year I reckon. Done had it all at oncet. They’s a good warm spell comin on. Won’t nothin make, won’t nothin keep. A seventh year is what it is.

He gazed at the floor between his shoes, out of the bell-flared tops his shinbones rising hairless, pale and polished as shafts of driftwood and into his trouser legs. Get older, he said, you don’t need to count. You can read the signs. You can feel it in your ownself. Knowed a blind man oncet could tell lots of things afore they happent. But it’ll be hot and dry. Late frost is one sign if you don’t know nothin else. So they won’t but very little make because folks thinks that stuff grows by seasons and it don’t. It goes by weather. Game too, and folks themselves if they knowed it. I recollect one winter, I was jest a young feller, they wadn’t no winter. Not hardly a frost even. It was a sight in the world the things that growed. That was a seventh year seventh and you’ll be old as me afore it comes again.

The old man paused, consulted a trouser button. Then he said: I look for this to be a bad one. I look for real calamity afore this year is out.

When the boy asked him the old man explained that there was a lean year and a year of plenty every seven years. The boy thought about it. Then he said: That makes it ever fourteen year then, don’t it?

Well, said the old man, depends on how you count I reckon. If’n you count jest the lean and not the plenty, or the other way around, I reckon you could call it ever fourteen year. I reckon some folks might figure thataway. I call it the seventh my ownself.

He gazed at the wall above the line of wicker chairs. The attendant passed through the room with a young man and a woman. She was drying her eyes with a yellow lace handkerchief. They went out. After a while the boy said:

They got Marion Sylder.

The old man turned his head, the fine white silk of his hair lifting slightly with the motion as if a breeze had touched it. Who’s that? he said.

Sylder. The … the feller used to haul whiskey for Hobie. They caught him with a load and sent him to Brushy.

Thought his name was Jack, the old man said.

No, Sylder. Marion Sylder. He was a friend of mine.

Yes, the old man said. I recollect seein him on the mountain time or two. Had a black car. Kindly a new one I believe it was. Say they sent him to Brushy.

Three years. For runnin whiskey.

That’s pitiful, the old man said. Feller nowadays you don’t get by with much. Yes, I recollect the boy, don’t know as I ever did meet him. Well, I hope he fares better’n me. I cain’t get used to all these here people. The old man looked like he might be going to say more but he stopped and he looked at the boy, his wiry and tufted brows bunched whether in pain or anger and eyes blanched with age a china-blue, but fierce, a visage hoary and peregrine.

How long do you have to … stay in?

Here? he said, looking about him. Likely a good while, son. They ain’t never said what I was charged with nor nothin but I suspicion they think me light in the head is what it is. I reckon you knowed this was a place for crazy people. What they tend to do with me when they come to find out I ain’t crazy I couldn’t speculate. He patted the front of his shirt where he had put the tobacco. How’s young Pulliam? he said.

He’s gone up in the country to stay with his gram-maw, the boy said. Ain’t nobody much left around no more.

No, the old man said. He ever catch him a mink?

No. I caught one though.

Did, eh? What did it bring?

It never brought nothin. They was a bobcat or somethin got aholt of it and tore it up.

That’s a shame, said the old man. Did ye lay ye a set for that old cat?

Me and Warn did. But we never caught nothin but a big old possum.

Cats is smart, allowed the old man. Course it could of been a common everday housecat. They’ll tear up anything they come up on, a cat will. Housecats is smart too. Smarter’n a dog or a mule. Folks thinks they ain’t on account of you cain’t learn em nothin, but what it is is that they won’t learn nothin. They too smart. Knowed a man oncet had a cat could talk. Him and this cat’d talk back and forth of one another like ary two people. That’s one cat I kept shy of. I knowed what it was. Lots of times that happens, a body dies and their soul takes up in a cat for a spell. Specially somebody drownded or like that where they don’t get buried proper.

But not for no longer than seven year so he would be gone now and I don’t have to fool with him no more except he ought not to of got burnt, that ought not to of happent and maybe I done wrong in that way to of let that happen, but it’s done now and he’s gone, that had to of been him Eller was supposed to of heard, wonderin what all it could of been squallin thataway, not that I’d of told anybody — him leavin out cat and all and bound most probably for hell and I hope they don’t nobody hear no more from him never. So that man put him there either justified or not is free too afore God because after that seven year they cain’t nobody bother you, what that lawyer said and I had been scoutin nine year he said was two year longer than needful but this time I was too old and they catched me .

Yes, he said, they’s lots of things folks don’t know about sech as that. Cats is a mystery, always has been. He stopped, passed a hand across his face dreamily. Then he turned to the boy. Believe you’ve growed some, ain’t ye? he said.

The boy ran his palms along his knees. I reckon, he said.

Mm hm, the old man said. What do you figure you’ll make?

I don’t know, he said. Not much of nothin.

Well, the old man said, it’s always hard for a young feller to get a start. Does seem like they’s any number of ways to get money nowadays, not like when I was growin up cash money was right hard to come by. They’s even a bounty on findin dead bodies, man over to Knoxville does pretty good grapplehookin em when they jump off of the bridge like they do there all the time. They tell me he gets out fast enough to beat anybody else to em only not so fast as they might stit be a-breathin. So they tell it leastways.