Cormac McCarthy - Outer Dark

Yes, Holme said.

Aye, said the old man. He tilted his chair back against the side of the house once more. It was very quiet. The hounds lay like plaster dogs in a garden.

Well, I thank ye for the drink, Holme said.

Best not be in no rush, the man said.

Well, I got to be gettin on.

Whereabouts is it you’re headed?

Just up the road. I’m a-huntin work.

I doubt you can make it afore nightfall.

Make what?

Preston Flats. It’s about fourteen mile.

What’s between here and it?

The old man gestured toward the woods. Just like you see. More of it. They’s one more house. About two mile down.

Who lives there?

They don’t nobody live there now. Used to be a minktrapper lived there but he got snakebit and died. Been snakebit afore and thowed it off. This’n got him in the neck. When they found him he was kneelin down like somebody fixin to pray. Stiff as a locust post. That’s about eight year ago.

They Lord, Holme said.

Well. The old man recrossed his legs. I never did like him much anyways. Poisoned two of my dogs.

How come him to do that?

I don’t know. Mayhaps he never meant to. He used to poison for varmints. They said they had to break ever bone in his body to get him laid out in his box. Coroner took a sixpound maul to him.

Holme looked at him in dull wonder and the old man looked at the steaming woods beyond the road. He lifted a twist of tobacco from the bib of his overalls and paused with it in his hand while he consulted pockets for his knife.

Chew? he said.

I thank ye, Holme said. I ain’t never took it up.

The old man pared away a plug and crammed it in his mouth. Do ye drink? he asked.

I’ve been knowed to, Holme said.

I’d offer was I able but I ain’t. Ye ain’t got nary little drink tucked away in your poke have ye?

I wisht I did, Holme said.

Aye, the old man said. Clostest whiskey to here is a old nigger woman on Smith Creek and it ain’t good. Sides which they’s genly a bunch of mean bucks lays out down there drunk. Got knives ye could lean on. Last time I was down there you couldn’t of stirred em with a stick. Makes a feller nervous. He shifted the cane to the other knee and spat. Don’t it you?

I expect it would.

Listen yander, he said, tilting his head.

What’s that? said Holme.

Listen.

The dogs lifted their long faces and regarded one another.

Yander they go, the old man said, pointing.

They watched a high and trembling wedge of geese drift down the sky with diminishing howls.

Used to hunt them things for a livin afore it was outlawed, the old man said. That was a long time ago. Fore you was borned I reckon. You ain’t no game warden are ye?

No, Holme said.

Didn’t figure ye was. You ever see a four-gauge shotgun?

No. Not to recollect it I ain’t.

The old man rose from his chair. Come in till I show ye one, he said.

He led the way into the house, a two-room board shack sparsely furnished with miscellaneous chairs, an iron bedstead. It smelled stale and damp. On the lower walls grew scalloped shelves of fungus and over the untrod parts of the floor lay a graygreen mold like rotting fur. There was a rattlesnake skin almost the length of the room tacked above the fireplace. The old man watched him watch. I ain’t got nary now, he said.

What?

Snakes. I’m out. That’n there was the biggest. Biggest anybody ever seen or heard tell of either.

I wouldn’t dispute it, Holme said.

He was eight foot seven inches and had seventeen rattles. Big in the middle to where ye couldn’t get your hands around him. Come back here.

They made their way through a maze of crates, piles of rags and paper, a stack of warped and mildewed lumber. Standing in the corner of the room was a punt gun some seven feet long which the old man reached and handed out to him. Holme took it and looked it over. It was crudely stocked with some porous swamp wood and encrusted with a yellow corrosion that looked and smelled of sulphur.

What ye done was to lay it acrost the front end of your skiff and drift down on em, the old man said. You’d pile it up with grass and float down and when ye got to about forty yards out touch her off into the thickest of em. See here. He took the gun from Holme and turned it. On the underside was an eyebolt brazed to the barrel. Ye had ye a landyard here, he said. To take up the kick. He cocked the huge serpentine hammer and let it fall. It made a dull wooden sound. She’s a little rusty but she’ll fire yet. You can charge her as heavy as you’ve got stomach for it. I’ve killed as high as a dozen ducks with one lick countin cripples I run down. They bought fifty cents apiece in them days and that was good money. I’d be a rich man today if I’d not blowed it in on whores and whiskey.

He set the gun back in the corner. Holme looked about him vaguely. On a shelf some dusty jars filled with what looked like the segmented husks of larvae.

You don’t pick ary guitar or banjer do ye?

No, Holme said.

If’n ye did I’d give ye one of them there rattles to put in it.

Rattles.

Them snakes rattles yander. Folks that picks guitar or banjer are all the time puttin em in their guitar or banjer. You say you don’t play none?

I ain’t never tried my hand at it.

Some folks has a sleight for music and some ain’t. My granddaddy they claimed could play a fiddle and he never seen one.

None of us never took it up, Holme said.

I’d show ye snakes but I ain’t got nary just now. Old big’n yander’s the one got me started. Feller offered to give me ten dollars for the hide and I told him I’d try and get him one like it but I didn’t want to sell that’n. So then he ast me could I get him one live and I thought about that a little and I told him yes anyways. So he says he’ll take all I can get at a dollar a foot and if I come up on anothern the size of old big’n yander he’ll give double for it. But I ain’t never seen the like of him again. Might if I live long enough. I use a wiresnare on a pole to hunt my snakes with. It ain’t good now. Spring and fall is best times. Spring ye can smoke em out and fall they lay around to where ye can pick em up with your hands pret-near. I hunt them moccasins too when I can see one but they don’t pay as good and they more trouble. The old man spat into the barren fireplace and wiped his chin and looked about him with a kind of demented enthusiasm.

Well, Holme said, I thank ye for the water and all …

Shoo, come out on the porch and set a while. Ye ain’t set a-tall.

Well just for a minute.

They went onto the porch and the old man took his rocker and pointed out a chair to Holme. Holme sat and folded his hands in his lap and the old man began to rock vigorously in the rocker, one loose leg sucking in and out of its hole with a dull pumping sound.

You know snakes is supposed to be bad luck, he said, but they must have some good in em on account of them old geechee snake doctors uses em all the time for medicines. Unless ye was to say that kind of doctorin was the devil’s work. But the devil don’t do doctorin does he? That’s where a preacher cain’t answer ye. Cause even a preacher won’t say they cain’t help nor cure ye. I’ve knowed em to slip off in the swamp theirselves for a little fixin of somethin another when they wasn’t nothin else and them poorly. Ain’t you?

I reckon, Holme said.

Sure, the old man said. Even a snake ain’t all bad. They’s put here for some purpose. I believe they’s purpose to everthing. Don’t you believe thataway?

The old man had leaned forward in his rocker and was watching Holme with an intent look, his thumb and forefinger in his beard routing the small life it harbored.