Cormac McCarthy - Outer Dark

No, she said.

All right.

She turned the paper around and made a little X at the bottom and held the quill toward Holme. He took it and bent above the paper and made an X beside the X and handed back the quill. She signed it and wafted it in the air for a moment and handed it to the squire. He waved it away with a languorous hand and looked at Holme.

I fine ye five dollars, he said.

I ain’t got no five dollars.

The squire blew his nose into a stained rag and put the rag back in his hip pocket. Ten days then, he said. You can work it out.

All right.

Set down. He turned to the woman. Put that up now and get him some breakfast. You had breakfast? No. Get him some breakfast. Cain’t work prisoners on a empty stomach. All right John, was that all it was you wanted?

John was sitting forward in his chair waving one hand about. Just a danged minute, he said.

What is it?

Well dang it, how many of them ten days does he work on my place?

The squire had paused with his hand outstretched, scratching at something in his armpit. Your place? he said.

My place.

Why would he be comin down to work on your place?

Well dang it I brought him in. He was breakin in my daddy’s house …

I cain’t be comin down to your place with him ever day just because he happened to pick your daddy’s old house to break into.

Well if I hadn’t of arrested him he’d not be here a-tall …

I appreciate you bringin him in and all, John, but they ain’t no reward out for him nor nothin. Is they now? I don’t make the law, I just carry it out.

Well I don’t see why you ort to benefit from what I done. Or from what he ain’t able to pay. I guess you goin to pay back the county his wages, or fine, or whatever …

The squire had stopped scratching. Well now John, he said, you know my books is open to anybody. Ain’t that right, woman.

That’s right, the woman said. Holme was watching her. She wasn’t listening to any of it.

It wouldn’t hurt you none to let me have him a few days out of them ten.

The squire shook his head wearily. John, he said, you and me has always been good neighbors. Ain’t we.

I reckon, John said.

Have I ever turned ye down for a favor?

I ain’t never ast ye none.

Well you always knowed all you had to do was ast. Ain’t that right?

That’s right, the woman said. The squire threw her a sharp look.

I don’t know, John said. Ain’t this a favor?

No.

No. It’s just what’s fair.

Don’t make no difference about fair or not fair, it’s against the law. You ain’t authorized to work no prisoners.

I ort to of just shot him and let it go.

No, you done right bringin him in like ye done. But you cain’t ast me to break the law and turn him back over to ye. Can ye now?

Shit. Scuse me mam.

I wouldn’t ast you to break the law. Would I now. John?

John had risen from the chair. He didn’t look back. He went out through the house with the shotgun hanging in one hand and his boots exploding over the bare boards through the rooms and they could hear the doorlatch and then the loud and final closing of the door and silence again for a moment and then a riotous squabble of chickens and then nothing.

Set down, the squire said. What are you doin with your boots off of such a cold mornin?

Holme took the chair the other man had vacated and sat and pulled on the boots laboriously. He stamped his numb feet on the floor but he could feel nothing. He looked up.

He told me to just tote em. I reckon he figured a feller barefoot be less likely to cut and run.

The squire shook his head sadly. I believe he’s slipped a cog somewheres, he said.

I never bothered nothin in his old house, Holme said.

Don’t make no difference, the squire said. You done been sentenced. I give ye pretty light for a stranger anyways.

Holme nodded.

We’ll get you started here directly you get your breakfast.

Thank ye, Holme said.

Don’t thank me. I’m just a public servant.

Yessir, he said. Grease was frying violently in a skillet behind him and the woman was putting biscuits to warm in the oven. His stomach felt like it was chewing.

The old lady’ll fix ye a bed here in the kitchen. You ain’t no desperate outlaw are ye? Ain’t murdered nobody?

No sir. I don’t reckon.

Don’t reckon eh? The squire smiled.

Holme wasn’t smiling. He was looking at the floor.

Get ye fattened up a little here on the old woman’s cookin you’ll be all right, the squire said. Might get some work out of ye then. You reckon?

Yessir. I ain’t scared to work.

The squire had tilted back in his chair, regarding him. I don’t believe you’re no bad feller Holme, he said. I don’t believe you’re no lucky feller neither. My daddy always claimed a man made his own luck. But that’s disputable, I reckon.

I believe my daddy would of disputed it. He always claimed he was the unluckiest man he knowed of.

That right? Where’s he at now? Home I reckon, where you …

He’s dead.

The squire had propped one foot on the chair before him and was rubbing his paunch abstractedly, watching nothing. His hand stopped and he looked at Holme and looked away again. Well, he said. I guess that’s about as unlucky as a feller would be likely to get.

Yessir.

You got ary family a-tall?

I ain’t got sign one of kin on this earth, Holme said.

Here, the woman said.

Holme looked vacantly at the steaming plate of eggs before him.

Holler when you get done eatin, the squire said, rising. I’ll be out in the back.

All right, Holme said. How long can I stay?

The squire stopped at the door. What? he said.

I said how long can I stay.

The squire shrugged his coat over his shoulders. It’s ten days at fifty cents a day. That’s all.

What about after that?

What about it.

I mean can I stay on longer?

What for?

Well, just to stay. To work.

At fifty cents a day?

I don’t care.

Don’t care?

I’ll stay on just for board if you can use me.

It was very quiet in the kitchen. The squire was standing with one hand on the door. The woman had stopped her puttering with dishes and pots. They were watching him.

I don’t believe I can use ye, Holme, the squire said. Holler when ye get done.

SHE CAME from the house onto the porch and stood there taking the soft evening air and smelling the rich ground beyond the road where he followed the mule down the creek and back and down again through a deepening haze, he and the mule alike beset by plovers who pass and wheel and repass and at length give up the long blue dusk to bats. The flowers in the dooryard have curled and drawn as if poisoned by dark and there is a mockingbird to tell what he knows of night.

She sat quietly in the rocker. It was full dark when he came up from the bottoms, stooped under the small japanese plow, the mule coming behind him in the gloom and the two passing like shades but for the paced hollow clop of the mule’s shoeless feet in the road and then the softer sound in the wet grass and the slight chink of harness until they went beyond hearing into the barnlot. She was not even rocking. After a while she heard him in the house and he lit a lamp and came to the porch door and called her. She rose and went in, past him wordlessly and her slippers like mice along the dark hallway until he caught up behind her and lit her way into the kitchen where she began to fix his supper.

He sat at the table watching her, his hands cupped uselessly in his lap and his face red in the lamplight. Watching her move from the stove to the safe and back, mute, shuffling, wooden. When she set the greens and cold pork and milk before him he looked at them dumbly for a long time before he took up his fork and he ate listlessly like a man in sorrow.