Cormac McCarthy - Outer Dark

I don’t know, Holme said. I ain’t never much studied it.

No. Well. I ain’t much neither but that’s the way I believe. The more I study a thing the more I get it backards. Study long and ye study wrong. That’s what a old rifleshooter told me oncet beat me out of half a beef in a rifleshoot. I know things I ain’t never studied. I know things I ain’t never even thought of.

Holme nodded dully. I got to get on, he said.

Stay a spell, the old man said. Ain’t no need to rush off.

Well, I best get on.

Just stay on, the old man said. I’ll learn ye snakehuntin. You look to me like a young feller who’d not be afeared of em.

Maybe, Holme said. But I got to get on.

You got kin over twards the flats?

No.

Ain’t married are ye?

No.

Might’s well stay on.

The praying minktrapper materialized for him out of the glare of the sun like some trembling penitent boiling in the heat there, a shimmering image beyond which the shape of the forest rose likewise veered and buckling. He blinked his eyes and stood from the chair. I thank ye kindly, he said, but I got some things needs looked after.

What’s that?

Holme was stretching with his hands deep in his pockets, rocking a little on his heels. He stopped. What? he said.

I said what is it needs looked after if it’s any of my business.

Holme looked at him. Then he said: I’m huntin a woman.

The old man nodded his head. I cain’t say as I blame ye for that. I live to see the fifth day of October I’ll be sixty-three year old and I …

No, Holme said. My sister. I mean to say I’m a-huntin my sister.

The old man looked up. Where’d you lose her at?

She run off. She’s nineteen year old and towheaded. About so high. Wears a blue dress all the time. Rinthy. That’s her name.

How come her to run off?

I don’t know. She ain’t got right good sense in some ways. She just up and left. I don’t reckon you’ve seen such a person have ye?

Not to notice it I ain’t.

Well.

I had a wife one time used to run off. Like a dog. Best place to hunt em is home again.

She ain’t rightly got a home.

Where’d she run off from then?

Holme had paused with one foot on the top step, one hand spread over his knee. He pursed his lips and spat, dry white spittle. Well, he said, she ain’t actual what you’d call run off. She just left. I figured I’d ast anyways. If she might of come this way. If I don’t find her soon I’m goin to have to start huntin that tinker and I’d purely hate that.

She got ary kin she might of went to?

No. She ain’t got no kin but me.

Kin ain’t nothin but trouble noway.

Yes, Holme said. Trouble when you got em and trouble when you ain’t. I thank ye kindly.

Shoo, the old man said. Just stay on.

Well, I best get on.

The old man took up his cane from where he had leaned it against the side of the house. Well, he said, come back when ye can stay longer.

I will, he said. He went down the steps into the yard. The hounds raised their eyes to watch him go. He half turned again at the road and lifted one hand and the old man nodded and made a little motion with his cane.

Thank ye for the water and all, Holme said.

Shoo, said the old man. I wouldn’t turn Satan away for a drink.

THE TWO HOUNDS rose howling from the porch with boar’s hackles and walled eyes and descended into the outer dark. The old man took up his shotgun and peered out through the warped glass of his small window. Three men mounted the steps and one tapped at the door. And who is there? A minister. Pale lamplight falling down the door, the smiling face, black beard, the tautly drawn and dusty suit of black. Light went in a long bright wink upon the knife blade as it sank with a faint breath of gas into his belly. He felt suddenly very cold. The dogs had gone and there was no sound in the night anywhere. Minister? he said. Minister? His assassin smiled upon him with bright teeth, the faces of the other two peering from either shoulder in consubstantial monstrosity, a grim triune that watched wordless, affable. He looked down at the man’s fist cupped against his stomach. The fist rose in an eruption of severed viscera until the blade seized in the junction of his breastbone and he stood disemboweled. He reached to put one hand on the doorjamb. He took a step backwards as if to let them pass .

HE KEPT WALKING after the sun was down. There were no more houses. Later a moon came up and the road before him went winding chalky and vaporous through the black woods. Swamp peepers hushed constantly before him and commenced behind as if he moved in a void claustral to sound. He carried a stick with him and prodded each small prone shadow through which he passed but this road held only shapes of things.

When he did reach Preston Flats the town looked not only uninhabited but deserted, as if plague had swept and decimated it. He stood in the center of the square where the tracks of commerce lay fossilized in dried mud all about him, turning, an amphitheatrical figure in that moonwrought waste manacled to a shadow that struggled grossly in the dust.

He hurried on, through the town where houses and buildings in shadow halved the narrow road and his own shape fled nimbly over the roofs, on into the country past farms remote and dark in the lush fields of early summer, the night cool, a hushed blue world of the dead.

Later he slept in a field, trampling a nest out of the fescue and lying there with his hands between his knees, watching the random motes of birds passing across the moon’s face in the night.

He was gone in the morning before daybreak. The road went from farmland into pine woods. He walked along with his pockets full of old shelled fieldcorn he had gathered and which he chewed with a grim rotary motion of his jaws. Toward noon he came upon a turpentine camp and he turned in here along a log road until he came to a cluster of sheds. A group of negroes were huddled about on the ground eating cold lunches out of pails and there was a man standing there looking at them or past them, somewhere, one foot propped on a log, tapping with a pencil at a tablet he held. When he saw Holme he stopped tapping and looked at him for a moment and then looked away again. Howdy, he said.

How are you? Holme said.

I ain’t worth a shit. You?

Tolerable thank ye. I taken you to be the bossman.

No, I work for these niggers.

Holme sifted the dry corn in his pocket with one hand. I wondered if you might not need some help, he said.

I think I can handle it, the man said. He looked Holme over, the pencil poised in the air. Clark send ye down?

No. I don’t know no Clark.

Is that right? I wisht I didn’t. The son of a bitch has set me crazy.

Holme smiled slightly. The man turned away, looking toward the negroes. They were smoking and talking in low voices. He was jotting figures on the pad.

You ain’t said, Holme said.

Said what?

If you needed help.

I said no.

I mean no kind of help.

No. Go ast Clark.

Where’s he at?

The man looked at him sideways. Are you sure enough lookin for work? he said.

Yessir.

Shit. Well. Well hell, go see Clark anyway. He might can help ye.

Where’s he at?

Home most likely. Dinner time. Ast in town.

All right, Holme said. Which way is it?

Which way is what?

Town.

Well which way did you come?

I don’t know. I just come up the road and seen this here camp and thought I’d ast.

Well they ain’t but one road so if you didn’t come thew town it must be on up the road wouldn’t you reckon?

Thank ye, Holme said. Much obliged.

The man gave him one last half-contemptuous look and then turned and called something to one of the negroes. Holme went on. A dozen steps on the road he turned again. Hey, he said.