The Orchard Keeper (1965)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  The two men were warming their hands at the fire, the shorter one grinning goodnaturedly at the boy. The other hound had appeared, hovering suddenly at the rim of light and snuffling at the steaming wool and then slouching past them with nervous indifference, the slack hound grace, to where Lady lay quietly peering across her paws into the fire. He nosed at her and she raised her head to look at him with her sad red eyes. He stood so for a minute, looking past her, then stepped neatly over her and melted silently into the black wickerwork of the brush. The other man moved over to her and reached down to pat her head. One ear was mangled and crusting with blood.

  Coon’s hard on a walker, he said. Walker’s got too much heart. Old redbone like that—he motioned toward the blackness that encircled them—he’ll quit if it gets too rough. Little old walker though—he addressed the dog now—she jest got too much heart, ain’t she?

  When Sylder let him out of the car his clothes were still wet. You better scoot in there fast, he told him. Your maw raise hell with you?

  Naw, he said, she’ll be asleep.

  Well, Sylder said. We’ll go again. You got to stay out of the creek though. Here, I got to get on. My old lady’ll be standin straight up.

  All right, we’ll see ye. He let the door fall.

  Night, Sylder said. The car pulled away trailing ropy plumes of smoke, the one red taillight bobbing. He turned toward the house, lightless and archaic among the crumbling oaks, crossed the frosted yard. His shadow swept upward to the lean-to roof, dangled from a limb, upward again, laced with branches, stood suddenly upon the roof. He slid downward over the eaves and disappeared in the black square of the gable window.

  III

  Some time after midnight on the twenty-first of December it began to snow. By morning in the gray spectral light of a brief and obscure winter sun the fields lay deadwhite and touched with a phosphorous glow as if producing illumination of themselves, and the snow was still wisping down thickly, veiling the trees beyond the creek and the mountain itself, falling softly, and softly, faintly sounding in the immense white silence.

  On that morning the old man rose early and stared long out at the little valley. Nothing moved. The snow fell ceaselessly. When he pushed the screendoor it dragged heavily in the drifts packed on the porch and against the house. He stood there in his shirtsleeves watching the great wafers of snow list and slide, dodging the posts at the corner of the house. It was very cold. The hiss of the coffeepot boiling over on the stove brought him in again.

  All day it darkened so that when night came no one could tell just when it had come about. Yet the snow fell, undiminished. Windless, pillowed in silence, down-sifting … No one was about. All the dogs were quiet. In his house the old man lit a lamp and settled back in a stout rocker near the stove. He selected a magazine from a rack alongside, an ancient issue of Field and Stream, limp and worn, the pages soft as chamois, spread it on his lap and began to leaf through it who knew it now almost by heart—stories, pictures, advertisements. From time to time he could hear scuffling sounds beneath him, scratchings in the darkness under the floor where Scout turned uneasily in his nest of rotting sacks.

  He turned the pages for a while and then got up and went to the kitchen where from a high cupboard above the tapless sink he fetched down a molasses jar near filled with a viscous brickcolored liquid opaque as clay. He screwed off the cap, took a clean jelly jar from the sideboard and poured it full. Then he went back to his chair, settled the drink on its broad arm, adjusted the magazine in his lap and began to rock gently back and forth, the liquid in the glass lapping sluggishly with the motion. Now and again he took a sip, staining the white stubble beneath his lip a deep maroon. The oil-lamp glowed serenely at its image, a soft corolla, inflaming the black window-glass where a curled and withered spider dangled from a dusty thread.

  The old man rocked, dwarflike in his ponderous chair. He seemed to be weighing some dark problem posed in the yellowed pages before him.

  Toward late morning a rooster called and the old man’s window blushed in a soft wash of rose. He slept and color drained from the glass and the east paled ash-gray. The rooster called once again, questioningly, and shortly the old man jerked awake in his chair, knocking the jelly glass to the floor where it rolled about woodenly.

  He peered through the hazy light of the room. It was morning, the lamp out and the stove too, and he found himself stiff and shivering with the cold, rubbing his eyes now, then his back. He rose gingerly and opened the door of the stove, poked among the feathery ashes. He went to the window and looked out. The snow had stopped. Scout was standing in snow to his belly, gazing out at the fantastic landscape with his bleary eyes. Across the yard, brilliant against the façade of pines beyond, a cardinal shot like a drop of blood.

  There were three of them coming up the trackless road past the house, and two dogs. One of them carried a rabbit, holding it loosely by the hind legs, its head jerking limply as they went. The other two carried guns and the boy knew one of them. He hadn’t seen him since school started in September.

  They were talking and gesturing and they didn’t notice him standing there in the yard so he moved out toward the road, making for the mailbox, plopping his feet into the dazzling and unbroken drifts. The one carrying the rabbit had his feet wrapped—wound and encased in burlap sacks to the knee and held with twine. He saw him coming and then Warn turned and saw him too and waved.

  Heyo, John Wesley.

  Howdy, he said, sliding down the bank.

  He met Warn Pulliam in the summer, headed toward the pond one afternoon when he saw the buzzard circling low over Tipton’s field and noticed that there was a string looping down from its leg. He came up through the field to the crest of the hill and there was Warn holding the other end of the string while the buzzard soared with lazy unconcern above his head.

  Howdy, Warn said.

  Howdy. He was looking up at the buzzard. What you doin?

  Ah, jest flyin the buzzard some. He cain’t get up lessen they’s some wind. So when we get a little wind I gen’ly fly him some.

  Where’d you get him, he asked. The back of his neck was already beginning to ache from staring up at the wheeling bird.

  Caught him in a steel trap. You want to see him?

  Sure.

  He pulled the bird out of the sky by main force, heaving on the cord against the huge and ungiving expanse of wing, lowering him circle by circle until he brought him to earth. There the buzzard flopped about on its one good leg and came to rest eying them truculently, beady eyes unblinking in the naked and obscene-looking skull.

  Turkey buzzard, Warn explained. They’s the ones got red heads.

  Where do you keep him?

  Been keepin him in the smokehouse, he said.

  Don’t nobody care for you to keep him?

  Naw. The old lady set up a fuss but I told her I was goin to bring him in the house and learn him to set at table and that calmed her down some. Here, don’t get too close or he’ll puke on ye. He puked on Rock and Rock like to never got over it—stit won’t have nothin to do with him. Don’t nobody think much of him I reckon but me. I like him cause he’s about a mean son of a bitch and twice as ugly. What’s your name?

  The two dogs were beagles, shortlegged and frantic, leaping in and out of the chest-high fall of snow, or plowing their noses through it and furrowing snow up and past their ears, their tails spinning, then looking up with white brows and whiskers, gnomic and hoary-faced as little old men.

  Where you-all goin? he asked them.

  T’wards the quarry, Warn said. Come on go with us—I got me a skunk in a hole I got to get out. This here’s Johnny Romines—motioning at the tall boy with the shotgun—and that there’s Boog.

  Howdy, he said. They nodded.

  We done got us a rabbit, Boog said, holding up the snow-dusted and stiffening quarry. Johnny shot him in the field yonder.

  The dogs circled him, sniffing his cuff. Them’s Johnny’s dogs, Boog added. Rabbi
t dogs. Bugles.

  Beagles, idjit, Warn said.

  Yeah, Boog said. Them’s what they are.

  Where’s Rock? the boy asked.

  He’s layin up under the house still lickin his foot where he accidental stepped in the snow this mornin. Cain’t get him to stir a stump. Sides he won’t run rabbits noway. He’s a bear dog.

  I got me a dog now, he told them. Half bluetick and half walker. Makes as good a tree dog as they is goin. They were moving up the road, the beagles for outriders prancing and frisking.

  You run him? Boog asked.

  Naw. He’s jest a pup. I been keepin him with a feller over on Henderson Valley Road raises dogs. He’s the one give him to me.

  You don’t need no more excuse to run wild at night. That was what she said to him standing there in the kitchen with the pup under his arm. She must be a pistol, Sylder said when he returned with it, embarrassed, explaining why he couldn’t keep it. Don’t make no difference though. He’s stit yourn; you jest keep him here is all and come get him any time you’ve a mind to.

  I got me a old musket at home belonged to my great-grandaddy, Boog said. It’s nigh on long as me my own sef.

  They left the road and crossed a field dotted with scrub cedars, the beagles coursing now and Johnny Romines calling to them to hunt. He and Warn trampled the brush piled all down a rock draw and scouted the frozen drainage ditches but no rabbits appeared. They crossed a fence and came out onto the railroad, following it south across the white quilted fields, the sun on them now glinting and the last traces of icefog dispersing in myriad blue crystals on the shining air.

  At the sinkhole they stopped and skittered down the bank to test the ice; it was black and evil-looking and woven with sticks and weeds. The beagles came to the edge and whined, pawing tentatively. After a while they came out too and rushed wheeling and sliding in a game of tag, their hindquarters spinning from under them as they turned. Boog couldn’t skate because of his feet being wrapped so he sat on the bank holding the rabbit and watching them. Later he built a fire, making a platform of hickory bark and piling dead cedar branches on top and they came and sat around it.

  This here’s where Johnny caught the bullfrog, Warn said. Right over yander off the end of that log. By the ass in a mousetrap.

  How’d he do that? John Wesley asked.

  He bet me a dope on it. I seen him come by the house with this mousetrap on a piece of bailin wire. Said he was fixin to catch him a bullfrog. We come on over and he set it on the end of that log there and then we went on to the store. I thought the poor bastard had done lost his rabbit-assed mind …

  Johnny Romines grinned. He told everybody in the store, he said.

  Yeah, we all like to of fell out laughin. So the son of a bitch bets me a dope he’s caught one by the time we come back and sure as hell there he is. Pinched right by the ass. I like to never got over it. And wouldn’t nothin do but we come straight back to the store frog trap and all and me buy him the dope right there.

  It’s a old Indian trick, said Boog.

  What’s that?

  Puttin bark down like that. To lay your fire on.

  When he reached the fence he rested again, removed his gloves and blew into his cupped hands. Along the face of the mountain and down the valley floor guns were sounding, echoing in diminishing reiteration. The trees were all encased in ice, limbless-looking where their black trunks rose in aureoles of lace, bright seafans shimmering in the wind and tinkling with an endless bell-like sound, a carillon in miniature, and glittering shards of ice falling in sporadic hail everywhere through the woods and marking the snow with incomprehensible runes. Something flicked rapid and invisibly past and struck with a soft pock into the bark of a poplar above him. The thin spat and whine of a rifle followed.

  The old man paid no attention. He pulled his gloves on, gathered the wire in one hand and stepped through, the posts on the downhill side jiggling where they dangled in their wires like sticks in a spiderweb, the earth having long been washed from about their moorings. Some dogs were trailing and after a while he could see them below him where the last finger of bleak trees reached into a cut and met the barren fields, the dogs coming out from behind the timber, moving slow and diminutive, their voices small as a child’s horn, two of them. They dipped into the cut and swarmed up the other side and out, across the fields, their brown and white shapes losing definition in the confectionary landscape of mudclods and snow until only their motion was discernible, like part of the ground itself rumoring upheaval.

  He went slowly, the snow heavier now, drifted and billowing in the honeysuckle and breaking it down into the path so that he had to skirt below it in places, teetering with edged steps along the incline, uncovering in his footsteps wet patches of leaf black as swampwater, not even frozen. When he reached the top of the mountain, the road curving away in a white swath through the trees, he paused to brush the snow from his shoulders and turn out the lumps of ice gathered in his cuffs. He plowed his way down the drifts some hundred yards and re-entered the woods to the other side, carrying in his hand now the huge handleless knife forged from an old millfile, receding among the small trees in his stooped and shambling gait, apparitional, a strange yuletide assassin.

  A quarter hour later he emerged back into the road again still carrying the knife and dragging behind him a small cedar tree. At the curve below the orchard he stopped and looked back, then relegated the knife to some place in the folds of his coat and shouldered the tree. A little further on he entered the woods again, trace of a path or road leading off to the right. This time he was gone for only a few minutes. When he came back, unburdened of the tree now, he followed his tracks to where he had first come onto the road and so disappeared once more into the woods, down the slope of the mountain the way by which he came.

  They threaded their way over the jumbled limestone of the quarry, Warn in the lead, until they came to the cave.

  It don’t look like much, Johnny Romines said.

  It opens up inside, Warn said. Here, let me hang him up here and I’ll show ye. He wedged the skunk in the fork of a sapling and then disappeared down into the earth, crawling on hands and knees through a small hole beneath the rocks. They followed one by one, the stiff winter nettles at the cave door rattling viperously against the legs of their jeans. Inside they struck matches and Warn took a candlestub from a crevice and lit it, the calcined rock taking shape, tonsiled roof and flowing concavity, like something gone partly to liquid and frozen back again misshapen and awry, their shadows curling threatfully up the walls among the dried and mounded bat-droppings. They studied the inscriptions etched in the soft and curdcolored stone, hearts and names, archaic dates, crudely erotic hieroglyphs—the bulbed phallus and strange centipedal vulva of small boys’ imaginations.

  They followed the strip of red clay that traced the cave floor into another and larger room, hooted at their lapping echoes, their laughter rebounding in hollow and mocking derision. Water dripped ceaselessly, small ping and spatter on stone. The two dogs hung close to them, stepping nervously.

  This’n here’s the biggest room, Warn said. Then I got me a secret room on back with a rock in front of it so you cain’t see it. Then they’s a tunnel goes back, but I ain’t never been to the end of it. Ain’t no tellin where-all it goes.

  Boog came up dragging a load of dead limbs and presently they had a fire going in the center of the big room. This here is the way the cave-men used to do, Boog said.

  They used to be cave-men hereabouts, said Warn. Pre-storic animals too. They’s a tush over on the other side of the mountain stickin out of some rock what’s long as your leg. Ain’t no way to get to it lessen you had ropes or somethin.

  Johnny Romines took out a packet of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. Boog borrowed it and rolled one too and they sat smoking in long steady pulls. Which’d you rather be, Boog asked John Wesley, white or Indian?

  I don’t know, the boy said. White I reckon. They always whipped the India
ns.

  Boog tipped the ash from his cigarette with his little finger. That’s so, he said. That’s a point I hadn’t studied.

  I got Indian in me, Johnny Romines said.

  Boog’s half nigger, said Warn.

  I ain’t done it, Boog said.

  You said niggers was good as whites.

  I never. What I said was some niggers is good as some whites is what I said.

  That what you said?

  Yeah.

  I had a uncle was a White-Cap, Johnny Romines said. You ought to hear him on niggers. He claims they’re kin to monkeys.

  John Wesley didn’t say anything. He’d never met any niggers.

  Tell John Wesley here about the time we dynamited the birds, Warn said. This is last Christmas, he explained. His daddy give him a electric train one time and they got it out for his little brother.

  Johnny Romines told it, slowly, smiling from time to time. They had wired the transformer of the train to a dynamite cap stolen from the quarry shack and buried the cap in the snow.

  We had us a long piece of lightwire, he said, and we set in the garage with the transformer all hooked up. Warn here claimed it wouldn’t work. Well, we’d sprinkled breadcrumbs all round over where the cap was buried out in the yard and directly you couldn’t see for the birds. I told Warn to thow the switch.

  Goddamn but it come a awful blast, said Warn. I eased the switch on over and then BALOOM! They’s a big hoop of snow jumped up in the yard like when you thow a flat rock in the pond and birds goin ever which way mostly straight up. I remember we run out and you could see pieces of em strung all out in the yard and hangin off the trees. And feathers. God, I never seen the like of feathers. They was stit fallin next mornin.

  Lord, whispered Boog, I’d of liked to of seen that.

  John Wesley had begun to cough. Ain’t it gettin kindly smoky in here to you? he asked. Above their heads smoke roiled and lowered and they noticed they could no longer see the walls of the cave.