Cormac McCarthy: Outer Dark

Howdy, he said. I was talkin to a man down to the store said you might need some help. Said you might have some work …

No, the squire said.

Well, he said. I thank ye. He turned and started away.

You, the squire said.

He stopped and looked back.

You don’t mind no for a answer, do ye?

I figured you would know one way or the other, he said.

Or maybe you don’t need work all that bad.

I ast for it. I ain’t scared to …

Come here a minute.

He retraced his steps and stood facing the squire again, the squire looking him over with those hard little eyes as he would anything for sale. You got a good arm, he said. Can you swing a axe?

I’ve been knowed to, he said.

The squire seemed to weigh something in his mind. Tell you what I’ll do with you, he said. You want to earn your supper they’s a tree blowed down out back here needs cut up to stovewood.

All right.

All right, eh? Wait here a minute. He went away in the house and then in a few minutes he was back and led the man outside, motioning him with one finger across the yard toward a workshed. They entered and he could see in the gloom a negro bent over a piece of machinery.

John, the squire said.

The negro rose wordlessly and approached them.

Give this man a axe, he said. He turned to Holme. Can you sharp it?

Yessir, he said.

And turn the wheel for him to sharp it.

The negro nodded. Right, said the squire. Ever man to grind his own axe. All right. It’s in the side over yander. You’ll see it. Just a little old pine. What’s your name?

Holme.

You ain’t got but one name?

Culla Holme.

What?

Culla.

All right, Holme. I like to know a man’s name when I hire him. I like to know that first. The rest I can figure for myself. John here will fix you up. Two-foot chunks and holler when you get done.

He went out and Holme was left facing the negro. The negro had yet to speak. He went past with a great display of effort, one hand to his kidney, shuffling. He fumbled in a corner of the shed for some time and came forth with the axe from the clutter of tools in a broken barrel. The man watched him take it up with endless patience out of a shapeless bloom of staves skewed all awry as if this container had been uncoopered violently in some old explosion, take it up and hand it to him without comment and shuffle on to the stone which he now began to crank. Holme watched him. The wheel trundled woodenly. He laid the rusted bit against it and pressed out a sheaf of sparks which furled in a bright orbit there and raced and faded across the negro’s glistening face, a mute black skull immune to fire, the eyes closed, a dark wood carving provoked again and again out of the gloom until the steel was properly sharp.

That’s good, he said.

The negro opened his eyes, rose and nodded and returned to the bench where he had been working. He went out, hefting the weight of the axe in his hand and by the better light at the door of the shed examining the edge of it.

The tree was not far from the house. It was broken off some six feet from the ground and the standing trunk with its hackle of ribboned wood looked like it had been chewed off by some mammoth browsing creature. He paced off the fallen section and straddling the trunk, working backwards, dressed off the limbs. Then he marked off two feet from the butt end and sank the axe into the wood.

He worked easily, letting the weight of the axehead carry the bite. He had cut four sections before he stopped to rest. He looked at what he was doing and then he looked at the sun. He stood the axe against the stump and returned to the shed to look for the negro but he wasn’t there. He crossed the yard to the kitchen door again and knocked. When she opened it he could smell cooking. I wonder could I see the squire a minute, he said.

The squire came to the door and peered out at him as if dim of recollection. What? he said. A saw? I thought you was done.

No sir, not yet. I thought maybe it might go a little quicker with a saw.

The squire watched him as if awaiting some further explanation. Holme looked down at his feet. Across the doorsill in the rich aura of cookery the squire’s figure reared silently out of a pair of new veal boots.

Just a little old bucksaw or somethin, Holme said.

They ain’t no saw, the squire said. It’s broke.

Well.

I thought you hired out as a axe-hand.

Holme looked up at him.

Wasn’t that what you hired out for?

Yessir, Holme said. I reckon. He looked at the squire to see if he might be smiling but the squire wasn’t smiling.

Was there anything else you wanted?

No sir. I reckon not.

Well.

Well, Holme said. I’ll get on back to it.

The squire said nothing. Holme turned and started back across the yard. As he passed through the gate he looked back. The squire had not moved. He stood rigid and upright in the coffin-sized doorway with no expression, no hint of a smile, no list to his bearing.

He worked on through the afternoon while shadow of post and tree drew lean and black across the grass. It was full evening before he was done. He stacked the last pieces and shouldered the axe and went on across the lot toward the shed. This time the negro was there and he handed him the axe, still neither of them speaking, and went to the door of the house again and knocked for the third time this day.

I won’t even ast if you’re done, the squire said.

All right.

All right. Well. I reckon you’re hungry ain’t ye?

Some.

I reckon you just eat twice a day. Or is it once?

Why? Holme said.

You never ate no dinner as I know of.

I wasn’t offered none.

You never ast for none.

Holme was silent.

You never ast for nothin.

I just come huntin work, Holme said.

The squire hauled by its long chain a watch from somewhere in his coat, snapped it open and glanced at it and put it away. It’s near six o’clock, he said. Likin about three minutes. How much time would you say you put in on that job?

I don’t know, Holme said. I don’t know what time it was I commenced.

Is that right? Don’t know?

No sir.

Well it was just before dinner. And now it’s just before supper. That’s the best part of half a day. Ain’t it?

I reckon, he said.

The squire leaned slightly forward. For your supper? he said.

Holme was silent.

So I reckon a full day would be for dinner and supper. Still ain’t said nothin about breakfast. Let alone a place to sleep. Not even to mention money.

You was the one, Holme said. You said what …

And you was the one said all right. Come on man. What is it you’ve done. Where are you runnin from? Heh?

I ain’t runnin from nowheres.

No? You ain’t? Where you from? I never ast you that, did I?

I come from down on the Chicken River.

No, the squire said. My wife’s people was from down thataway little as I like to say it.

I just lived there this past little while. I never claimed to of been borned there.

Before that then. Where did you live before?

I come from downstate.

I bet you do at that, the squire said. And then you come up here. Or down in Johnson County. And now you up here. What is it? You like to travel? When did you eat last if it’s any of my business.

I et this mornin.

This mornin. Out of somebody’s garden most likely.

I got money, Holme said.

I won’t ast ye where you come by it. You married?

No. I ain’t married. He looked up at the squire. Their shadows canted upon the whitewashed brick of the kitchen shed in a pantomime of static violence in which the squire reeled backward and he leaned upon him in headlong assault. It ain’t no crime to be poor, he said.