Cormac McCarthy - Outer Dark

Aye. Where’s he at now?

This here tinker has got him.

Tinker.

Yes mam. He come to the house while I was confinin. We’d been there four months or more and they’d not been nary tinker a-tall come round.

Ah. And stoled him away. I always heard they was bad about it.

She stirred uneasily in her chair. No mam, she said. My brother give it to him. Or sold it one. He tried to let on like it died but I caught him in that lie and he owned up what he done.

Your brother?

Yes mam.

And where’s he at?

I don’t know.

You’ve not lawed him?

No mam.

You ort to’ve.

Well. He’s family.

The old woman shook her head. When was it all? she said.

Just March or April. I forgot. She looked up. The old woman was looking past her, weighing the spoon in her hand.

I think most likely it was in March.

And you was a-nursin him.

No mam. I never had the chancet. I never even seen him.

The old woman looked down at her. You goin to have to find him or let him be. One or t’other.

Yes mam.

And you best grease them paps.

Yes mam, she said.

Aye, said the old woman. I got some I’ll give ye. She opened the firebox door and poked and spat among the flames and clanged it shut again. The sow reared half up and regarded them with narrow pink eyes and a look of hostile cunning. The old woman looked to her pot and then brought down a pitcher of buttermilk from her cupboard and a glass. I believe everbody loves a good drink of buttermilk, she said. Don’t you?

Yes mam, she said. She was watching a woodrat that had come from a pile of kindling along the wall and now paused to scratch with one tiny hindfoot.

Yander goes a old rat, she said.

I don’t have no rats in my house, the old woman said simply.

The rat looked at them and went on across the woodpile and from sight.

I cain’t abide varmints of no description.

She nodded. I’m like you, she said.

I’ll have us some supper here directly.

Thank ye, she said, the glass of milk in her hand, wearing a clown’s mouth of it. It had darkened in the room and fire showed thin and pink in the joints of the stove’s iron carriage.

They’s a tinker comes thew here be it ever so little often, the old woman said. Got a jenny to pull his traps and smokes stogies. Does that favor him?

I don’t know. I ain’t never seen him.

The old woman paused midway unscrewing a tin of snuff. She did not look up. After a minute she undid the tin and took a pinch of the tobacco between her fingers and placed it in her lower lip. Do ye dip? she said.

No mam. I’ve not took it up.

She nodded and put the lid back and replaced the tin in her shirt pocket. If you ain’t never seen him, she said, how do you expect to know him when ye do.

Well, she said, I don’t believe he had no jenny.

Most don’t.

He sells them books.

What books.

Them nasty books.

Most do. I thought you said he come to the house.

He did come to it but he never come in it.

Did you want some more buttermilk?

No thank ye mam. I’ve a plenty.

It’s a poor lot wanderin about thataway, said the old woman.

They ain’t no help for it.

And if ye find him what?

I’ll just tell him. I’ll tell him I want my chap. She was gesturing strangely in the air with one hand. The old woman watched her. Milk ran from the dark cloth she wore, the hand subsided into her lap again like a falling bird. I’d of wanted to see it anyways, she said. Even if it had of died.

The old woman nodded and wiped the corners of her mouth each in turn with the pursed web of her thumb. Aye, she said. Reach them plates down from behind ye now.

Yes mam.

Did you come thew Well’s Station?

Yes mam. This mornin. I seen two fellers hung in a tree.

That was yesterday.

No mam. It was this mornin.

I reckon they still there then. They was supposed to of killed old man Salter over there.

It sinkened me in my heart to see it.

Yes. Here. I’ll get the lamp directly.

Ain’t you scared by yourself?

Some. Sometimes. Ain’t you?

Yes mam. I always was scared. Even when they wasn’t nobody bein murdered nowheres.

HE CAME DOWN out of the kept land and into a sunless wood where the road curved dark and cool, overlaid with immense ferns, trees hung with gray moss like hag’s hair, and in this green and weeping fastness birdcalls he had not heard before. He could see no tracks in the packed sand he trod and he left none. Sometime in the afternoon he came upon a cabin and upon the veranda an old bearded man seated with a cane tilted across one knee. Two hounds watched him with bleeding eyes, muzzles flat to the scoured and grassless soil in the yard. He slowed his steps and raised one hand. The old man did not move for a minute and then his hand came slowly from his lap palmoutward no higher than his chest and returned without pausing.

Howdy, he said.

Howdy, said the old man, a voice remote and soft.

I hate to bother anybody but I was wonderin could I might get a sup of water from ye.

Wouldn’t turn Satan away for a drink, the old man said. Come up.

Thank ye, he said, coming through the yard, the hounds rising surly and mistrustful and moving away.

Got a well full, the man said. Just round back. Help yourself.

Thank ye, he said again, going on with a final nod, along the side of the house to the rear where an iron pump stood on the end of a pipe a foot above the well cover, as if the ground had settled and left this shank exposed. He took up the handle and cranked it and immediately the water came up clear and full and gorged the pump’s tongue and cascaded into a bucket at his feet. He watched a spider move in its web across the flume inspecting from drop to drop the water beading there. He took the gourd from the bucket and rinsed and filled it and drank. The water was cold and sweet with a faint taste of iron. He drank two dipperfuls and passed the back of his hand across his mouth and looked about him. A small garden grubbed out of the loamy soil and beyond that an impenetrable wall of poison ivy. Random stands of grass, scraggly and wheatcolored. A waste of blue clay where washwater was thrown.

The back of the house was windowless. There was a door with no handle and a stovepipe that leaned from a hole hacked through the wall with an axe. There was no sign of stock, not so much as a chicken. Holme would have said maybe it was whiskey, but it wasn’t whiskey.

He went back to the man on the porch. That’s fine water, he said.

The old man turned and looked down at him. Yes, he said. Tis. Know how deep that well is?

No. Fifty foot?

Not even fifteen. It’s actual springwater. Used to be a spring just back of here but it dried up or sunk under the ground or somethin. Sunk, I reckon. Year of the harrykin. Blowed my chimley down. Fell out in the yard and left a big hole in the side of the house. I was settin there watchin the fire and I blinked and next thing I was lookin outside. Come mornin I went to the spring and it weren’t there. So I got me a well now. Don’t need all that there pump but I chancet to come by it. Good water though.

Yes it is.

Seems like everthing I get around runs off in the ground somewheres and I got to go after it.

You live here by yourself?

Not exactly. I got two hounds and a ten-gauge double-barrel that keeps me company. They’s lots of meanness in these parts and I ain’t the least of it.

Holme looked away. The old man tilted forward in his chair and stroked his beard and squinted.

Live by yourself and you bound to talk to yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you’re light in the head. But I reckon it’s all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don’t understand and cain’t answer if he did.