Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

The man had been dead for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Sylder staggered to the car and sat on the runningboard, stared unblinking into the brass eye of the sun ponderous and unreal on the red hills until he lost consciousness.

Morning. Lying with his cheek in the dust of the road he had a child’s view, the jack looming like a fallen tree and beyond that the man face-upward like a peaceful giant composed for sleep. The rocks in the road threw long shadows and the first birds were about.

Sylder had already started dragging the heavy body off into the Johnson grass and poison ivy when he heard the sound of a motor somewhere on the curves behind him. He stopped, then turned and started toward the coupe again trying to run and dragging the carcass behind him with one hand, stumbling, knowing halfway there that he would never make it, that he had made a mistake. So he didn’t even open the door but dropped the body as he reached the car, squatted over it, and gripping the underside of the runningboard for support jacked his feet up into the man’s armpits and slid him toes up beneath the car for three-fourths his length just as a truck rounded the far curve and caught him struggling to his feet.

The sun was well up. Across the open country, the wale of pines shedding scarves of mist like swamp gases rising on the steamy air, some crows were hawking their morning calls. Sylder scooted from under the car, stood and was idly toeing out the drag-marks when the truck pulled alongside. He knew they would stop and already he began to think that he had done the best thing, that they would have seen the man inside, would insist on helping when they saw his … His arm: he snapped his head and two faces peering from the halted truck blurred and he looked down and saw the great smear of blood on his arm and dried and blackening on his shirtfront, was still looking at it sickly when a voice from the truck said:

Kin we hep ye?

He didn’t look up for a second, caught in the pain of his wrecked shoulder raging now as if loosed by the voice from the truck cab, and not lost either to the irony of it. Then he raised his face to the curious sympathetic eyes watching him with a bland serenity that not even the bloody vision of himself could ruffle.

They were on the far side, he looking at them across the incline of the open turtledeck, so that even as he said We he thought: They can’t see him. Yet he couldn’t get his mind that far ahead, and even afterwards could not trace the possibilities on their separate courses. He reconciled the whole thing by this: that there was no way to keep them from getting out of the truck anyway. So he said: We had a little accident, and thought Yes, they will get out anyway. These bastards will jest have to get out and see good.

The truck doors spread simultaneously like rusty wings and fell to in a rattle of glass uncushioned by any upholstery. They were a man and his son, the elder heavy and red, with creased skin, the younger a tall and thinner duplication. They came shuffling around the rear of the car with an air of infinite and abiding patience. Sylder turned slowly, his eye raking over the scene, trying to imagine what it looked like: the feet protruding solemnly from under the car, the car itself with the hole torn in the quarterpanel and in the door, the dent where the base of the jack hit and the jack lying in the road …

You hurt bad? the man asked.

Naw, Sylder grunted. The man was looking past him.

What happent?

Car fell, Sylder said. No-account piece of a jack give way on me. He kicked at the handle.

The man eyed the strewn jack. Shore did now, didn’t it, he said. Whew. Them things’r dangerous as a cocked gun. Always have maintained it. How about your buddy there? Nodding at the upturned feet.

Yeah, Sylder said to himself. How about him now. Then to the man: He’s all right. Knocked the muffler down when she fell. Soon’s he gets her wired back we’ll be set. The man was moving around him; Sylder cut him off. Say, he said, tell you what you might do.

What’s that?

Get your dead ass out of here, Sylder thought. He said: Well, you might carry me down to Topton, see a doctor. Durned arm’s bleeding pretty bad.

Shore, said the man, I guess we might better at that. Looks pretty bad. You come on.

They started for the truck, Sylder behind them, herding them. He moved around to the cab, hung back till the older one got in, then stooped to one knee and spoke loudly to the corpse:

Listen, these fellers going to carry me in to Topton to the doc’s. You come on when you get done … You all done? He rose and turned to the man sitting now in the truck, the motor already started. Listen, he said. He’s about done, I’ll jest go on in with him. You fellers go on, we’ll be all right now … and thinking Will you go now? Will you go?

Well, the man said, leaning across the boy (wide-eyed, still silent, getting into the truck), you sure you okay now?

Sure, Sylder said, already waving to them. Much obliged.

You’re more’n welcome, the man said. His face moved back, the boy nodded. The gears shifted with a grating sound and the motor died, hushed suddenly in the blue stillness of the broken day.

Sylder stood there listening to the tortured cranking of the starter and thinking: Ah, God. I should’ve knowed. That raggedy-assed son of a bitch ain’t goin to …

But it did. The motor coughed a few times, then clattered to a low roar. The gears raked again and the truck pulled away sifting up dustspurs from the rear wheels and was gone almost instantly beyond the curve of the road.

They never seen the hole, Sylder said. They must never of even seen it. Then he thought: How in hell would they know how long it’d been there if they had?

He turned and made for the far side of the car, listing badly, staggerfooted, reeled at the rear bumper and collapsed into the trunk whacking his broken shoulder against the spare tire. There he sat for some minutes dazed and his mind threatening unconsciousness again.

Got to get the hell out of here, he said, shaking his head and wobbling to his feet. He steadied himself with one hand against the cool skin of the coupe, worked his way to the other side and squatted there above the brogans. He cursed them for a while, then took hold of one worn heel and bracing a foot against the runningboard began to pull the man out. He tried not to look when the head emerged, then gave up and had a good look. The eyes were leaping from their sockets, an expression of ghastly surprise, the tongue still poking out. Sylder pulled him to the back of the car, got his hand in the shirt collar, lifting him bodily, and jerked him into the trunk. Only the legs dangled over the bumper and these he folded in after. Then he collected the jack and threw it in, dropped the lid, went to the switch for the keys and locked the trunk.

Night. The coombs of the mountain fluted with hound voices, a threnody on the cooling air. Flying squirrels looped in feathery silence from tree to tree above the old man sitting on a punk log, his feet restless trampling down the poison ivy, listening to Scout and Buster flowing through the dark of the flats below him, a swift slap slap of water where they ghosted through the creek, pop of twig or leaf-scuttle brought to his ear arcanely — they were a quarter mile down — and the long bag-throated trail-call again.

When Sylder turned the key, the handle, and swung the lid up, he didn’t expect the stench that followed, poured out upon him in a seething putrid breath. He didn’t even have time to step back. The spume of vomit roiled up from the pit of his stomach and he staggered away through the brush and saplings, retching, finally falling to his knees and heaving in dry and tortured paroxysms. After a while it stopped. He sat there for a long time with the sour green taste of bile in his mouth, lightheaded, trying to make himself believe that he could go back and do what he had to. He stood up and smoked a cigarette.