Cormac McCarthy: Outer Dark

He folded the towel about it and picked it up and holding it against the bib of his overalls with one arm began his way down the creek again.

When he reached the bridge and the road he had not been gone two hours. The child blinked mindlessly at the high sun. The tinker entered the woods on the other side of the road where he had hidden the cart and searched among his goods until he came up with some cheap gingham in which to wrap the child. It drooped into sleep against his thin chest, its face mauve and wrinkled as though beset already with some anguish or worry. He placed it between some sacks in the floor of the cart and regarded it.

Well, he said, you alive if ye ain’t kickin. He stooped and took up the tongues of the cart and set off through the woods, into the road, the wending trackless corridor down which echoed the clatter of his wagon and the endless tympanic collision of his wares.

He did not stop when he reached the store. He turned left onto the state road, going north now, moving with the same tireless pace. The child had not cried and he had not looked at it. Late in the afternoon he stopped to eat and it did cry, a thin and labored squall as he bent above it, his mouth slow and ruminative, chewing, dry cornbread collecting in his beard and sifting down upon the child. Tell em about it, he said.

When the sun had gone he went on in darkness, the child quiet again as if motion were specific against anything that ailed it. The moon came up and grew small and the road before him went white as salt. He jangled on through an iceblue light in his amulet of sound.

Before midnight he entered a town. Past a mill where a wheel rumbled drunkenly under its race and water fell with a windy slash. Past stores and shops, dark clustered houses, heralded and attended by the outcry of dogs down the empty streets and on again into the patched farmland. Another mile and he came to a wagon drive and a house a short way from the road that sat likewise in darkness. He pulled up before the door and lowered the cart to the ground. Halloo there, he called.

He waited. After a while light appeared very faint and yellow among the weather-riven slats and a woman’s voice said: Who’s out there?

Me, said the tinker.

Come in, she said, swinging open the door and standing there in a rough shift with a tallow candle in one hand.

He stamped his boots ceremonially once each on the sill and entered. Howdy, he said.

Late hours for a old man ain’t it? she said.

It’s late hours for a young one. I need me a nurse woman.

I’ve never questioned that.

No … here, don’t shut the door. It’s for this here youngern.

What youngern.

One I got in the cart. Bring that candle here.

She followed him out suspiciously and peered past his shoulder down into the cart where the child lay sleeping.

Looky here, he said.

They Lord God.

Here, let me fetch him out.

You take this candle, she said. I’ll fetch him out.

It came awake with a thin yowl. She gathered it up and they went into the house and stretched it out on the crude board table, hovering above it nervously. Lord, she said, it ain’t but just borned.

I know it, he said.

Where all did it come from?

I found it in the woods, he said. It’d been thowed away and I found it.

This poor thing needs fed.

I know it, he said. Is they ary nurse about here?

She was biting the backs of her knuckles. Mrs Laird, she said. She’s just got her a new chap.

You reckon she’ll take it?

She ain’t got nary choice. Here, he needs better wrapped. Mind him a minute while I get some things and we’ll go.

Where does she live at?

Just up the road. You mind him a minute.

Setting forth in the faint moonlight, the tinker now at her elbow and her carrying the child wrapped completely from sight, they appeared furtive, clandestine, stepping softly and soft their voices over the sandy road in shadows so foreshortened they seemed sprung and frenzied with a violence in which their creators moved with dreamy disconcern.

IT DID NOT rain again. He looked for it to, dark and starless as it was, coming down a road he could not see and through a wood kept by nothing he could hear. When he entered the glade a small hot moon came dishing up from the overcast to see him home. There was no light in the cabin. He stood for a moment with the rack of his chestbones rising and falling.

She was sleeping. When he emerged from the cabin again he was carrying the axe. He crossed the glade to the spring path and entered the woods. In a grove of blackhaws he stopped and looked about him and then sank the axe into the earth. He passed his shirtcuff across his forehead and took up the axe again and began to hack at the ground with crazed industry.

She had tried once to reach for the lamp but she could not move. She called his name softly in the quiet but there was no answer. The door was open and after a while he was standing in it, he and the axe in an assassin’s silhouette against the slack gloss of the moon. He crossed to the table and took up the lamp and lit it, shaping the room from darkness. He turned to see her watching him, pale and disheveled and with such doll’s eyes of painted china.

Culla? she said.

You best hope it’s me.

Where you been?

Out.

Where’s it at?

There was a long silence. He had not set the lamp down. He was holding the stained chimney in one hand and she could hear him breathing in the quiet. The flame trembling unhoused between them held her eyes.

It died, he said.

When she woke in the morning he was not there either. There was a small fire on the hearth and she watched that. He came in after a while bearing wood but he did not speak. He got the dipper from the waterbucket and brought it to her, helping her up with one hand, her neck craned, drinking, on her lips a white paste that clove to the dipper rim.

I want some more, she said.

He brought it. When she had finished she lay back and watched the fire again.

How you feel this mornin? he said.

I don’t know. I don’t feel much of nothin.

You’ll be ailin some for a spell I would reckon.

I feel fevery.

You hungry?

I ain’t real hungry.

You want eggs? I believe they’s a egg.

If we got ary, she said.

There was one egg. He spooned lard into a pan and fried it over the fire and brought it to her along with a chunk of cornbread. I got to go to the store today, he said.

I got to go somewheres myself but I ain’t able.

She was eating very slowly, her eyes on the plate.

Yes, he said. All right. I’ll get somethin.

And she was bleeding again. He wet a fresh cloth and gave it to her.

You want anything?he said.

No. I don’t want nothin.

He took down a knotted handkerchief from the sideboard and untied it, laying the cloth out and unfolding a small sheaf of paper dollars. He counted them and took one, together with what loose coins there were, and put these in the pocket of his overalls. Then he retied the kerchief with the remaining money and put it back in the cupboard.

I’m gone, he said.

All right.

He stopped at the door and looked at her. She turned her head away slowly.

It was midmorning when he set out and it took him just a little over an hour to reach the store at the junction, the sun warm on his back and the fine pumice of the road already paling and going to dust again. A horsefly followed behind his head as if towed there on a string.

When he got to the store it was closed. He rattled the latch and peered inside. From an upper window a voice called down: We still christians here. You’ll have to come back a weekday. He turned away. By noon he was at the cabin again, sitting on a stump in the glade and carving at it intently with his knife. When he went in she was asleep in her foul bed. He sat before the fireplace watching ashes rise and wheel feebly in the cold light that fell there. She stirred heavily in her sleep, moaning. He watched her. When he could stay no longer he went out again and walked on the road. He could not decide what to do. He sat on a stone by the side of the road and with a dead stick drew outlandish symbols in the dust.