The Orchard Keeper (1965)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  It took them some time to get up the bank, the boy trying to push him up and him pulling himself along by trees, roots, handfuls of dead grass, holding the leg out behind him. Then they sat in the weeds at the edge of the field breathing white plumes into the cold morning air. In the quarter-darkness the fields looked like water, flat and gray. The boy was wet and cold; everything was wet and very cold. The man ran his hand along his leg trying to tell whether it was broken or not. His trousers were clammy against his skin. The boy sat in front of him hugging his shoulders and shivering, his toes lifeless, squishing in his boots when he wiggled them and sand and grit rasping in his socks. He said: Your head’s bleeding.

  The man ran his hand along the side of his face. Other side.

  He reached across and his hand came away sticky with blood and he wiped it on his trouser leg and turned to the boy. You want to do something for me?

  Sure, the boy said.

  Go down and get them keys then, and let’s get the hell out of here.

  The boy disappeared over the cut of the bank; the man could hear him in the water. Presently he came back and handed the keys over.

  Thanks, he said. Here. He took the boy’s hand and turned it over. What’d you do here?

  The boy looked down at his palm. There was a black and jagged line across it.

  You jest do that? the man asked.

  The boy looked at it dumbly. No, he said. I don’t think so. I must of done it when I fell in the creek. Before …

  The man dropped the keys in his pocket and struggled to his feet. Well, come on, he said. We better get ourselves patched up. This way, he added, seeing the boy start for the road. He motioned toward the field and set off with a hopping gait, muttering under his breath Whew, Mother.

  The boy followed him for a few paces, then quartered off to the creek again and the man watched him go, his legs disappearing in the mist, then the rest of him, so that he seemed to be gliding away toward the line of willows marking its course like some nightwraith fleeing the slow reaching dawn until the man wasn’t sure that he had really been there at all. Then he came back with a pole and handed it to him. Thanks, the man said.

  They moved on across the field, through vapors of fog and wisps of light, to the east, looking like the last survivors of Armageddon.

  Their path led them up the creek, along the edges of the fields that terminated there—a curve of fields and the creek and the cupped slope of the mountain rising up to their right along which shafts of light now appeared laterally among the ghostgray trees. They struggled through the last fence, the boy holding the wire and trying to help him and him cussing, crossed a plank bridge at the fork of the creek, out through a cattle gate and onto the road, Henderson Valley Road.

  The boy fastened the gate behind them and the man said, We got to stay off this road. They might of found it by now what with the light and all.

  They crossed the road and started up a steep dirt drive on the other side. We can call here, the man said. The boy could see him better now. He needed a shave and the blood crusted on the side of his face was broken in fine cracks like old dark pottery where he winced with the pain of his slow progress, leaning heavily on the pole and breathing hoarsely. He was leanhipped and tall and his poplin jacket hung loosely about his shoulders. The boy thought he must be awfully cold dressed no warmer than that and wet to the knees besides. His own feet he couldn’t feel at all now; they were like hooves rattling inside his boots. He hadn’t stopped shivering the whole time. The drive climbed and turned and then there was a house.

  It was an older man came to the door, a tremendous paunch slung in a gray and ragged undershirt drooped pendulously over the waist of his trousers like a sacked hog carcass. Out of a meaty face, jowled and white-stubbled with beard, two porcine eyes regarded them, blinking. Hot-toe-mitty, he said, slow and evenly. Then: Well, come on in if you’re able. They entered, the man hobbling in with his pole and the boy following. The room was warm and suffused with odors of cooking meat.

  Hey, old woman, their host called out, they’s two fellers here jest fell out of a aryplane.

  A woman came to the door at the far end and looked at them. Lord God, she said. She looked as if she might be going to say something else, then she clamped her jaw shut and disappeared with an air of briskness.

  The room itself was comfortable with the new catalog store prosperity of china lamps, linoleum floors, a Warm Morning heater in front of which he installed himself while the two men stood talking. They paid little attention to him and he just watched them, the injured man waving his arms, telling the story, the other scratching alternately belly and head and saying Godamighty softly to himself from time to time by way of comment. After a while the woman came to the door again and called them in for coffee.

  As they started for the kitchen the younger man motioned at him. This here is … he nodded to the boy.

  John Wesley, he said.

  John Wesley. This here is June Tipton—and this is his Mrs.

  Mrs Tipton nodded back at him as they entered the kitchen and said, How do, John Wesley.

  They sat down at the table and June said to the woman: John Wesley’s the one what pulled Marion out of the creek.

  She looked at her husband and then to him and smiled appreciatively. The one called Marion was fishing through his pockets for cigarettes. That’s right, he said. I might near of drownded.

  She smiled again. After a while she turned to her husband and said, What all was he doin in the creek?

  Jest laying there, June said. He blowed a tire and his car fell in.

  She looked at the boy again and smiled and went on sipping her coffee demurely. The boy lowered his face to the steaming mug before him. Small waterdrops tripped down from his thawing hair, beaded and dropped from his earlobes. He was still in his soaked mackinaw and a puddle of water was gathering on the linoleum beneath his chair. Raising his eyes above the rim of the cup he saw the woman looking at him, leaning forward. She reached out and squeezed his coat. It made a funny squishing sound.

  Lord God, she said, this youngern’s wet clear through. He’s a-fixin to take pneumony. She set down her cup and began pulling at the coat, trying to help him off with it. He seemed bent and tottering under the sheer weight of it.

  They got him out of his coat and by then the man had finished his coffee and stood and he said he was ready to go if June didn’t mind taking them.

  So they thanked the woman, declining breakfast two or three times, and filed through the door, him holding the mackinaw in his arms now like a great bundle of wet wash, and got into a pickup truck parked behind the house and pointing down the drive. June kicked the blocks from under the front wheels and got in and they began rolling silently, gaining speed, and then he let in the clutch and the motor came to life angrily and they catapulted down to the road, turned left toward the mountain, the truck coughing and lurching and a bluish haze boiling up in the cab. He sat in the middle between the two men, trying to keep his knees clear of the gearshift. Through a missing slat in the floorboard he could see the gray road sliding under and a slip of bitter wind angled up one jean-leg.

  They drove a mile or so up the mountain and turned into another drive not unlike the one from which they started. June turned the truck around in the yard and stopped and Marion opened the door and climbed painfully down. The boy waited.

  Better come on in, Marion said. The boy turned and started to say something and then June said, behind him:

  Reckon I better get on back.

  Well, he said, I sure am much obliged. John Wesley, you better come on in and get dried out some; your old lady’ll skin you for shoe leather.

  So he clambered out of the truck and slammed the door, the truck already moving and June waving at them, and he and the man started for the house. It was full light now, the air smoky and cold. A woman was standing in the door with her arms crossed, holding her shoulders. She let them past and came in, closing the door behind her.

 
; Mornin, the man said cheerfully.

  Are you hurt? she asked. She was small and blond and very angry-looking.

  Breakfast ready? he wanted to know.

  She looked like she might be going to cry, her face crumpled a little and her chin quivering. Damn you, she said. Won’t nothin do till you’ve killed yourself, is they? Why you ain’t dead afore now is a mystery to me and God too I reckon, as I don’t see why He’d have any call to look out after the likes of you any more than … she broke off suddenly and looked at the boy, standing there holding the coat in his arms and still dripping water. What about him, she pointed. Your helper. He hurt?

  The boy looked down at himself, soggy and mud-splattered, seeds and burrs collected on his waterdark jeans like some rare botanical garden being cultivated there, at his rubber kneeboots with twigs and weeds sticking out of them, feeling the blisters they’d worn and the cords in his ankles pulled from walking in them. One sock was completely off and scrunched down somewhere in the toe of the boot. I ain’t no helper, he said. I jest found him.

  He shot a glance up at the man. He was grinning. Don’t let him fool you, he said. He was drivin. But he ain’t hurt I don’t reckon. I ain’t neither, my leg is jest wore out fightin that dashboard.

  Your head’s wore out is what’s wore out, she said. You get out of them clothes. Here, set down. She guided him to a sofa and began trying to undo the laces of his shoes.

  The boy stood about uneasily, wondering what he was supposed to do. She got the man’s shoes off and his socks. Now she was unfastening his belt. He just sat there, quiet and unresisting, as if engaged in some deep speculation. She kept saying Damn you, damn you, in a tone of despair and solicitude at once.

  She was pulling his trousers off. The boy began to look about him wildly.

  What are you doin? the man said in mock indignity.

  You raise up, damn you!

  Here! he said. I’m in no shape for this kind of carryin-on.

  Marion Sylder, I’m not puttin up with your foolishness, you hear me? Now you get out of them britches and get out of them now and quick. God rest your poor mother I don’t know why she ain’t dead either puttin up with you long as she did … lift your feet. You … here, wait. I’ll get you some shoes too. She disappeared through a door and the man winked hugely at him, sitting there with his trousers in a pile under his feet.

  She came back and dumped some clothes into his lap—then she saw the great bruise on the side of his calf, livid in hues of red and purple against the bare white of his naked legs. She knelt and touched it, whimpering softly. She went out again and returned with a basin of water and a cloth and bathed it carefully, the man crying out from time to time in simulated anguish. But she didn’t cuss him any more. When she finished she turned to the boy. What about you? she said.

  Yesm?

  Yesm? She looked from him to the man and back. You goin to die standin there I reckon, Yesm. She narrowed her eyes at him. Start shuckin, she said.

  What?

  The man on the couch giggled. He was pulling on a clean shirt.

  Here, she said, go in yonder. She pointed behind her. I’ll get you some clothes in jest a minute.

  He started past her with strange sluicing sounds. Empty them boots first, she told him. He stopped. Outside.

  He said Yesm again, went to the door and returned, one sock on and one off, leaving odd unmatched tracks on the raw pine flooring.

  The door she pointed him through led to a bedroom. There was a fireplace with a coal grate and a faint warmth still issuing from it. He stood in front of it on a small hooked rug for a minute, then softly eased the door to.

  Get that blanket, the woman called to him.

  He peeled off his wet clothes, piling them on top of the mackinaw which he had laid carefully on the floor, took the rolled blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped himself in it.

  He was standing at the window looking out at the gray morning when she came in with the shirt and pants and handed them to him. Then she scooped his things off the floor and went out. He unfolded himself out of the blanket and got into the dry clothes. There was a pair of army socks too and he put these on and sat on the bed, wondering if it was all right to walk on the floor with them. She didn’t bring any shoes though and after a while he ventured out into the front room again. The man was dressed, his head bandaged, and he was sitting with his feet in a pan of water and reading a magazine. He looked up and saw the boy standing there in the drooping shirt and the trousers turned up at the bottoms and gathered at the waist by the expedient of fastening the front buttonhole to a suspender button on the side.

  They ain’t much of a fit, are they? the man said.

  Nosir.

  Marion.

  What?

  Marion. Sylder. That’s my name, Marion Sylder.

  Oh, he said.

  Pleased to meet ye.

  Yessir.

  Well, the man said, get ye a chair.

  He pulled up a cane rocker from beside the stove, sat quietly with his hands on his knees. The man leaned back on the sofa, a huge shapeless affair draped with a flower-print cover. Behind him on the wall in an oval frame hung a picture of him and the woman, the wife, peering out upon the room with tentative and uncertain smiles. There were small rugs scattered about the floor, some pieces of furniture—a sideboard, a table and chairs. On a small cabinet in one corner stood a walnut trophy with a small bronze automobile perched on top of it.

  You know what was in the car?

  The boy looked back at him. Yessir … Marion.

  Well, the man said. He returned to his magazine, leafed a page over slowly, looked back at the boy. He grinned. It was good stuff too, he said. Sixty gallons of it.

  Then the woman called them to breakfast and he put down the magazine and reached for a towel to dry his feet with. The boy noticed that part of the big toe was missing from the man’s left foot. It was nailless, curious-looking, sort of like a nose. The man eased his slippers on and stood up, supporting himself on the couch. Come on, he said, let’s eat some. And hopped off to the kitchen. The boy followed.

  They sat down to a breakfast of eggs and grits, biscuits and pork tenderloin and huge cups of coffee. The coffee was black and bitter and there was no milk or sugar on the table. The boy sipped it slowly, watched the man. The woman didn’t eat with them. She hovered about the edge of the table resupplying eggs and biscuits to their plates, filling their cups. The man didn’t say anything until he had finished except that from time to time he would nudge; a plate toward the boy and frown and grunt, urging him to eat. He finished off with biscuits and dark honey and got up from the table. In a few minutes he was back with coats and boots and handed a set to the boy. Come on, he said, I got somethin to show you you might like. The boy pulled on the coat and stepped into the cavernous brogans and they went out the kitchen door into the new morning, the air clear and cold as springwater, shreds of mist lifting off the mountain above them and light pouring through the gap like a millrace. The man hobbled ahead of him to a smokehouse where he pulled a bent nail from the wood and swung out the door, hinge, hasp, lock, and all, and went in. Come on, he said. The boy followed him into the musty gloom. Hello, gal, the man said. The air was rife and fetid with dog smells. Sounds of snuffling. Thin mewlings from somewhere in the corner. A small hound poked her face around the man’s knee and looked up at him. This here’s Lady, the man said. Lady sniffed at his billowing trousers.

  He could see now: a broken lantern swung from a beam, a clutter of tools, a grindstone, an anvil fashioned from a section of rail … The man was squatting in the corner, the hound skirting nervously behind his back, poking her nose under his arm. She got around him and settled in a pile of crokersacks and he could see the puppies then too over the man’s shoulder. They crawled over each other and fell to nursing. Lady blinked her mild hound eyes and gazed at the roof.

  The man picked out one and handed it to him. He took it, the fat slick little belly filling h
is palm, legs dangling, took it and looked at the quiet and already sad eyes, the pushed-in puppy face with the foolish ears.

  Four weeks old, the man was saying. That’s the best’n, but you can pick whichever one you want.

  Do what?

  His daddy’s a blooded bluetick—half bluetick half walker, the pups. Makes as good a treedog as they is goin. You like that’n?

  Yessir, he said.

  Well, he’s yourn then. You can take him home with ye in about another month, say.

  Jefferson Gifford thumbed his galluses onto his shoulders, took a last swallow of coffee from the still full earthenware cup and crossed with heavy boot-tread the curling linoleum of the kitchen floor to the rear entrance way where he took down his hat and jacket from a peg.

  A Plymouth? he repeated.

  Legwater was buttoning his coat. That’s what he said. I ain’t been down there. All I know is he said it was a Plymouth. He come straight to my place on account of it was on his milk route and he ast for me to call you. So I jest come on over. He said it was a Plymouth.

  Gifford adjusted his hat and opened the door. Well, come on, he said. I sure never heard of nobody hauling whiskey in a Plymouth.

  Ain’t you goin to call the Sheriff?

  Reckon I’ll see what all it is I’m callin him about first, Gifford said.

  They parked the car just beyond the creek and climbed through the wire fence and walked along slow, studying the swath the car had cut through the brush and small trees. It had cleared the fence completely, peeling a limb from a cottonwood that grew by the bridge, and come to earth some thirty feet from the road. It was upside down in the creek against the far bank and facing back the way it came. Gifford couldn’t see anything yet but the undercarriage, but he knew it wasn’t a Ford this time by the two semi-elliptic springs at the rear axle. They had to go back to the road and cross the bridge to get to the car. It was smashed up against some roots on the bank and they could see the glass leaking from the trunk lid.