Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

You, she called. Here! You come back here, you cain’t …

But that was all he heard, through the door now, running down the long hall toward the wide-flung outer doors where a breeze riffled the posters and notices on the wall and past them and again into the candent May noon.

The boy had already gone when they came from Knoxville, seven years now after the burial and seven months after the cremation, and sifted the ashes, since whipped to a broth by the rains of that spring and now dried again, caked and crusted, sifted them and there found the chalked sticks and shards of bone gray-white and brittle as ash themselves, and the skull, worm-riddled, vermiculate with the tracery of them and hollowed and fired to the weight and tensile cohesiveness of parched cardboard, the caried teeth rattling in their sockets. And a zipper of brass, fused shapeless, thick-coated with a dull green paste.

That was all. They were there four hours, the two officers deferential before the coroner, dusting the pieces with their handkerchiefs and passing them on to him who placed them in a clean bag of white canvas.

Mr Eller bit with his small teeth a piece from his plug of spiced tobacco, refolded the cellophane and put it again into his breast pocket. And the skull, he said. With all the fillins melted out of the teeth.

Okay. And the skull. Johnny Romines stopped, the cigarette half rolled in his left hand and leaking as he gestured with it. So, he said, what I want to know is did the boy know about it or not, and would he know was it his daddy?

I don’t know, Mr Eller said. If he did I never heard it. Asides he’s been gone off now since May or June and this is the fourth day of August they jest now gettin up there. I figure maybe the old man was the only one that knowed.

Old man Ownby? Was he the one done it?

No, Mr Eller said. Course they liable to thow it off on him to save huntin somebody else.

But he was the one told it?

Near as I can find out he was.

Johnny Romines passed the paper across his tongue and folded it shut. Well, do you reckon it was him? he said.

His daddy you mean? Room for speculatin there too I reckon. Miz Rattner claims that it was and that the boy has gone off to hunt whoever it was put him there. She says it all come to her in a dream — a vision, she called it.

Wonder if she had a vision about him bein wanted in three states, Gifford said.

Mr Eller turned on the constable. No, he said, I doubt she has. I don’t reckon she needs any sech either. She’s a good Christian woman don’t matter who-all she might of been married to and not knowed no better.

The constable looked at the storekeeper.

Or the boy either, Mr Eller added.

Never you mind about the boy, Gifford said. Me and him is due for a nice little talk anyway.

Well, you’ll have to find him first.

Wonder who it was, Johnny Romines said. That put him in there I mean. Reckon it was somebody from around here?

I doubt it was somebody from New York City, the constable said. He turned to Mr Eller. And what about that fancy plate he was supposed to have? In his head from the war.

What about it?

Well, they wadn’t none. How’s she account for that?

I don’t reckon she ever thought to ast about it. She jest never would of doubted or wondered about it in the first place. About whether he had one, if he said he did, or about whether that was him in that dittybag if she’d decided that it was either one. Mr Eller rolled his cheeks and spat soundlessly across the constable’s bow and into a coffeecan. Seems like you ought to tell your sidekick about it though, he said.

Who’s that?

Legwater.

He ain’t my sidekick, Gifford said. And I don’t have to tell nobody nothin cept as I see fit.

Mr Eller studied a passing fly, apparently ruminating on some obscure problem in the dynamics of flight. Well, he said agreeably, I reckon you’re right. Keep him out of mischief anyhow.

Gifford’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. What? What will?

Campin up on the mountain. With his shovel and his winderscreen.

Some coughs went their rounds. A milkcase settled floorward creakily.

Humph, said Gifford, unleaning from the counter with studied ease. He fingered cigarettes deftly from one straining pocket. Then: What’s he doin up there?

Mr Eller waited while the match rocketed across the counter. Then he said: Huntin platymum I reckon. Lessen he’s siftin them ashes for to make soap.

Legwater was on the mountain three days before anyone could get close enough to him to tell him it wasn’t so, that the man never had any platinum in his head and that he was wasting his time, it was all a mistake. The first night he built his fire and was sitting by it with his shotgun leaning against a tree and was sipping coffee from a canteen cup when the hound staggered into the clearing on the far side of the fire and stood with his blind head swinging back and forth like a bear’s, muzzle up to catch what clue the wind might bring.

Ha! cried Legwater, leaping up, the coffee flying. Ha! he said, stepped to the tree and snatched up the shotgun. But before he could get a proper sight the dog was gone again, absorbed quietly into the darkness. Legwater leveled the gun at the night and fired, listened after the compounding echoes of the shot for a long time and then stepped to the fire and got the cup and poured it full from the pot, squatting, the shotgun leaning against his knee. He listened some more, but could make nothing out. He set the pot back on the little circle of stones he had constructed and tried the hot rim of the cup against his lip. The hound did not reappear. When he had finished the coffee he rolled his blankets out, reloaded the empty chamber of the gun and settled for sleep.

Toward early morning he woke, sat up quickly and looked about him. It was still dark and the fire had long since died, still dark and quiet with that silence that seems to be of itself listening, an astral quiet where planets collide soundlessly, beyond the auricular dimension altogether. He listened. Above the black ranks of trees the midsummer sky arched cloudless and coldly starred. He lay back and stared at it and after a while he slept.

When he woke again the sun was up. He was still lying on his back and now in the depthless blue void above him a hawk wheeled. He got to his feet and began to walk around, feeling stiff and poorly rested. He scouted in the woods and came back with a load of dead limbs, snapped them to length under his foot and soon had a fire going and coffee warming. When it had perked he sat blowing at a cupful and shifting it from hand to hand as it got too hot or he found a new mosquito bite to scratch at. There was an army rucksack hanging from the tree near his blankets and from the pocket he took some cold biscuits and ate them. Then he got to work.

The ashes in the pit were better than a foot deep and the ground all about was strewn with them. He worked all day, shoveling out piles of ash and then climbing from the pit to sift them with his window-screen. Late in the afternoon some boys came into the clearing and stood for a time watching him. He kept at it, the clouds of ash billowing up out of the pit. Before long they began to comment. He looked at them sharply, not stopping, sifting the ashes, examining charred bits of cedar wood. Soon they were giggling among themselves. He ignored them, adopting an official air about his work. It was no good.

Might be gold teeth too, one of them sang out. A flurry of titters surged and died. Legwater stood up and glared at them. They were five, standing together just at the edge of the trees with grinning faces. He climbed back into the pit with his shovel. From time to time he would stretch his head up over the top of the hole to see what they were about, but about the third time one of them gobbled like a turkey and they all howled with laughter so he gave it up and tried not to look their way. He kept at his shoveling. After a while he heard something clatter near the pit. He looked up and the boys had gone. Then an apple dropped into the ashes at his feet with a soft puff. He stopped and craned his neck up. Sure enough, here; came another. He marked its course, leaped out of the pit and seizing the shotgun as he went began a fast walk in the direction from which the apple had come. Brush began crashing. A voice called: Run, fellers, run! He’ll shoot ye down and scalp ye. Another: You got silver in your teeth you’re a dead’n. He stopped. The sounds died away. On the road further down the mountain high laughter, catcalls. He went back to work. By nightfall he was a feathery gray effigy — face, hair and clothing a single color. He spat gobs of streaky gray phlegm. Even the trees near the pit had begun to take on a pale and weathered look.