The Orchard Keeper (1965)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  But I never done it to benefit myself because I knowed I’d have to scout the hushes if they found I done it as I allowed they would and if I did have my reasons stit they cain’t a man say I done it to benefit myself.

  A man gets older, he said, he finds they’s lots of things he can do jest as well without and so he don’t have to worry about this and that the way a young feller will. I worked near all my life and never had nothin. Seems like a old man’d be allowed his rest but then he comes to find they’s things you have to do on account of nobody else wants to attend to em. Like that would make em go away. And maybe they don’t look like much but then they lead you around like you might start a rabbit dog to hunt a fence-corner and get drug over half the county against nightfall. Which a old man ain’t good at noway. He eased himself slightly in the chair and shifted his weight. Most ever man loves peace, he said, and none better than a old man.

  Or even knows they need attendin to. But I never done it to benefit myself. Shot that thing. Like I kept peace for seven year sake of a man I never knowed nor seen his face and like I seen them fellers never had no business there and if I couldn’t run em off I could anyway let em know they was one man would let on that he knowed what they was up to. But I knowed if they could build it they could build it back and I done it anyway. Ever man loves peace and a old man best of all.

  Do they allow you to chew in here?

  I kindly doubt it, the old man said. I ain’t a-fixin to ast noway, I’ll jest slip me one when I see clear to. They’s some in here I wouldn’t put past tellin on a feller. Half loonies. The real loonies wouldn’t. Some here that ain’t crazy, like me, but I doubt they’d want to tell.

  I wonder how come them to be here, the boy said. The old man ran a lank and corded hand through his hair. I couldn’t say, he said. The ways of these people is strange to me. I did mean to ast you, you ain’t seen my old dog I don’t reckon?

  No, the boy said, I’ve not seen him. You want I could go out to your place and hunt him.

  Well, ever you’re out thataway might holler for him. I don’t know what to tell ye to do with him. I ain’t got no money to ast nobody to feed him with and I couldn’t shoot him was he too poor to walk, but might could somebody else …

  I see him I’ll take care of him, the boy said. I wouldn’t charge you nothin noway.

  Well, the old man said, refolding his hands in his lap. They looked up together, an orderly crossing the room with prim steps and bearing in tow an odor of disinfectant, cleaning fluid redolent of sassafras from the corridor where two Negroes mopped backwards toward each other. They could hear the measured slap of the mops on the baseboard above the door’s long pneumatic hiss until it closed and they sat again in quiet, the sunlight strong and airy in the room.

  That wasn’t the one. He said:

  What are these? the stethoscope still about his neck and jerking about rubbery when he moved.

  Shotgun done it, said the old man, seated half naked and in decorous rectitude upon the examining table with his feet just clearing the floor and looking straight ahead—so that the intern had moved him about roughly without speaking either as you might a cataleptic wasted thin with years until the old man had asked him quietly if he intended to kill him.

  What were you doing, robbing a henhouse?

  The old man didn’t answer. He said again:

  I know she’s here.

  If she is she don’t want to see you.

  I mean to see her.

  Then the barrel of the gun shortening and withdrawing in the cup of his shoulder and his face bent to the stock and him walking into it, the black plume of smoke forming soundlessly about the muzzle and the shot popping into his leg, audible and painless in his flesh and him taking another step with the same leg and pitching forward as if he had stepped in a hole and then he could hear the shot.

  You reckon you’ll come back to the mountain, the boy said. When you … come back?

  Oh, said the old man, well. Yes. Yes, most likely I will. I allowed I might go back up yander in the mountains where my new place is at but I don’t know as I will. A man gets lonesome off by hisself he ain’t used to it. I spect I’ll jest come on back if the old house ain’t fell down. Yes.

  He shuffled his feet on the floor. A shadow fell over them and he looked up to see the boy standing. Are ye leavin? he said.

  Yes, the boy said. I got to get on back.

  Well. I thank ye for the tobacca.

  It’s all right.

  Well.

  I’ll come again.

  No, the old man said.

  Yes. I will.

  Well.

  He stopped again at the door and lifted his hand. The old man waved him on, and then he was alone again. The mowers came back. A little later the attendant to lead him away.

  He stood in front of the courthouse again, again the heat and the sulphurous haze in fixed and breathless canopy above the traffic. He took the dollar from his pocket and pressed out the creases between his palms. It would leave him two dollars and what was left of the fifty cents, since he had gotten five and a half for the hides of which, he had paid the two to Sylder and now this dollar which he hadn’t even known that he owed. Then he climbed the walk, the dollar in his hand, past the arch and past the tireless bronze soldier and under the new shade of the buckeyes. He mounted the gritty footworn steps upward in a rush, into the hall, turning left and coming again to the long counter with the desks behind it. There was only one woman there, not the one he had traded with before. She was at a typewriter, the machine clacking loudly in the empty room. He stood at the counter watching her. After a while he coughed. She stopped and looked up. Can I help you? she said.

  Yesm.

  She still sat, hands poised over the machine. He stared back at her. She lowered her hands into her lap, swiveled the chair about to face him. He said no more and she rose and crossed slowly to the counter, adjusting her glasses as she went.

  Well, she said, what can I do for you?

  It’s about the bounty, mam. Hawks.

  Oh. You have a hawk. She was looking down at him.

  No mam, I done give it to ye. He had the dollar out in his hand now and waving it feebly, wondering could the price have gone up. I was figuring on trading back with ye if you-all don’t care, he said.

  Her brows pinched up a small purse of flesh between them. Trade back? she said. You mean you want to get the hawk back?

  Yesm, he said. If you-all don’t care.

  When did you bring it in?

  He looked to the ceiling, back again. Let’s see, he said. I believe it was around in August but it could of been early in September I reckon.

  They Lord God, son, the woman said, it wouldn’t still be here. Last August? Why …

  What all do you do with em? he asked, somehow figuring still that they must be kept, must have some value or use commensurate with a dollar other than the fact of their demise.

  Burn em in the furnace I would reckon, she said. They sure cain’t keep em around here. They might get a little strong after a while, mightn’t they?

  Burn em? he said. They burn em?

  I believe so, she said.

  He looked about him vaguely, back to her, still not leaning on or touching the counter. And thow people in jail and beat up on em.

  What? she said, leaning forward.

  And old men in the crazy house.

  Son, I’m busy, now if there was anything else you wanted …

  He smoothed the dollar in his hand again, made a few tentative thrusts, pushed it finally across the counter to her. Here, he said. It’s okay. I cain’t take no dollar. I made a mistake, he wadn’t for sale. He turned and started for the door.

  You, she called. Here! You come back here, you cain’t …

  But that was all he heard, through the door now, running down the long hall toward the wide-flung outer doors where a breeze riffled the posters and notices on the wall and past them and again into the candent May noon.

&n
bsp; The boy had already gone when they came from Knoxville, seven years now after the burial and seven months after the cremation, and sifted the ashes, since whipped to a broth by the rains of that spring and now dried again, caked and crusted, sifted them and there found the chalked sticks and shards of bone gray-white and brittle as ash themselves, and the skull, worm-riddled, vermiculate with the tracery of them and hollowed and fired to the weight and tensile cohesiveness of parched cardboard, the caried teeth rattling in their sockets. And a zipper of brass, fused shapeless, thick-coated with a dull green paste.

  That was all. They were there four hours, the two officers deferential before the coroner, dusting the pieces with their handkerchiefs and passing them on to him who placed them in a clean bag of white canvas.

  Mr Eller bit with his small teeth a piece from his plug of spiced tobacco, refolded the cellophane and put it again into his breast pocket. And the skull, he said. With all the fillins melted out of the teeth.

  Okay. And the skull. Johnny Romines stopped, the cigarette half rolled in his left hand and leaking as he gestured with it. So, he said, what I want to know is did the boy know about it or not, and would he know was it his daddy?

  I don’t know, Mr Eller said. If he did I never heard it. Asides he’s been gone off now since May or June and this is the fourth day of August they jest now gettin up there. I figure maybe the old man was the only one that knowed.

  Old man Ownby? Was he the one done it?

  No, Mr Eller said. Course they liable to thow it off on him to save huntin somebody else.

  But he was the one told it?

  Near as I can find out he was.

  Johnny Romines passed the paper across his tongue and folded it shut. Well, do you reckon it was him? he said.

  His daddy you mean? Room for speculatin there too I reckon. Miz Rattner claims that it was and that the boy has gone off to hunt whoever it was put him there. She says it all come to her in a dream—a vision, she called it.

  Wonder if she had a vision about him bein wanted in three states, Gifford said.

  Mr Eller turned on the constable. No, he said, I doubt she has. I don’t reckon she needs any sech either. She’s a good Christian woman don’t matter who-all she might of been married to and not knowed no better.

  The constable looked at the storekeeper.

  Or the boy either, Mr Eller added.

  Never you mind about the boy, Gifford said. Me and him is due for a nice little talk anyway.

  Well, you’ll have to find him first.

  Wonder who it was, Johnny Romines said. That put him in there I mean. Reckon it was somebody from around here?

  I doubt it was somebody from New York City, the constable said. He turned to Mr Eller. And what about that fancy plate he was supposed to have? In his head from the war.

  What about it?

  Well, they wadn’t none. How’s she account for that?

  I don’t reckon she ever thought to ast about it. She jest never would of doubted or wondered about it in the first place. About whether he had one, if he said he did, or about whether that was him in that dittybag if she’d decided that it was either one. Mr Eller rolled his cheeks and spat soundlessly across the constable’s bow and into a coffeecan. Seems like you ought to tell your sidekick about it though, he said.

  Who’s that?

  Legwater.

  He ain’t my sidekick, Gifford said. And I don’t have to tell nobody nothin cept as I see fit.

  Mr Eller studied a passing fly, apparently ruminating on some obscure problem in the dynamics of flight. Well, he said agreeably, I reckon you’re right. Keep him out of mischief anyhow.

  Gifford’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. What? What will?

  Campin up on the mountain. With his shovel and his winderscreen.

  Some coughs went their rounds. A milkcase settled floorward creakily.

  Humph, said Gifford, unleaning from the counter with studied ease. He fingered cigarettes deftly from one straining pocket. Then: What’s he doin up there?

  Mr Eller waited while the match rocketed across the counter. Then he said: Huntin platymum I reckon. Lessen he’s siftin them ashes for to make soap.

  Legwater was on the mountain three days before anyone could get close enough to him to tell him it wasn’t so, that the man never had any platinum in his head and that he was wasting his time, it was all a mistake. The first night he built his fire and was sitting by it with his shotgun leaning against a tree and was sipping coffee from a canteen cup when the hound staggered into the clearing on the far side of the fire and stood with his blind head swinging back and forth like a bear’s, muzzle up to catch what clue the wind might bring.

  Ha! cried Legwater, leaping up, the coffee flying. Ha! he said, stepped to the tree and snatched up the shotgun. But before he could get a proper sight the dog was gone again, absorbed quietly into the darkness. Legwater leveled the gun at the night and fired, listened after the compounding echoes of the shot for a long time and then stepped to the fire and got the cup and poured it full from the pot, squatting, the shotgun leaning against his knee. He listened some more, but could make nothing out. He set the pot back on the little circle of stones he had constructed and tried the hot rim of the cup against his lip. The hound did not reappear. When he had finished the coffee he rolled his blankets out, reloaded the empty chamber of the gun and settled for sleep.

  Toward early morning he woke, sat up quickly and looked about him. It was still dark and the fire had long since died, still dark and quiet with that silence that seems to be of itself listening, an astral quiet where planets collide soundlessly, beyond the auricular dimension altogether. He listened. Above the black ranks of trees the midsummer sky arched cloudless and coldly starred. He lay back and stared at it and after a while he slept.

  When he woke again the sun was up. He was still lying on his back and now in the depthless blue void above him a hawk wheeled. He got to his feet and began to walk around, feeling stiff and poorly rested. He scouted in the woods and came back with a load of dead limbs, snapped them to length under his foot and soon had a fire going and coffee warming. When it had perked he sat blowing at a cupful and shifting it from hand to hand as it got too hot or he found a new mosquito bite to scratch at. There was an army rucksack hanging from the tree near his blankets and from the pocket he took some cold biscuits and ate them. Then he got to work.

  The ashes in the pit were better than a foot deep and the ground all about was strewn with them. He worked all day, shoveling out piles of ash and then climbing from the pit to sift them with his window-screen. Late in the afternoon some boys came into the clearing and stood for a time watching him. He kept at it, the clouds of ash billowing up out of the pit. Before long they began to comment. He looked at them sharply, not stopping, sifting the ashes, examining charred bits of cedar wood. Soon they were giggling among themselves. He ignored them, adopting an official air about his work. It was no good.

  Might be gold teeth too, one of them sang out. A flurry of titters surged and died. Legwater stood up and glared at them. They were five, standing together just at the edge of the trees with grinning faces. He climbed back into the pit with his shovel. From time to time he would stretch his head up over the top of the hole to see what they were about, but about the third time one of them gobbled like a turkey and they all howled with laughter so he gave it up and tried not to look their way. He kept at his shoveling. After a while he heard something clatter near the pit. He looked up and the boys had gone. Then an apple dropped into the ashes at his feet with a soft puff. He stopped and craned his neck up. Sure enough, here; came another. He marked its course, leaped out of the pit and seizing the shotgun as he went began a fast walk in the direction from which the apple had come. Brush began crashing. A voice called: Run, fellers, run! He’ll shoot ye down and scalp ye. Another: You got silver in your teeth you’re a dead’n. He stopped. The sounds died away. On the road further down the mountain high laughter, catcalls. He went back to w
ork. By nightfall he was a feathery gray effigy—face, hair and clothing a single color. He spat gobs of streaky gray phlegm. Even the trees near the pit had begun to take on a pale and weathered look.

  The hound came back after dark. He could hear it padding in the leaves, stop, shuffle again. He had eaten the last of what food he had brought and could hardly sleep for the cramping in his belly. He held the shotgun and waited for the hound to enter the firelight. It did not. Finally he went to sleep with the shotgun lying across his lap. He was very tired.

  When he went to the pit the following morning the first thing he saw was an old goatskull, the brainpan crammed with tinfoil. He pitched it away in disgust and fell to shoveling.

  By late in the afternoon his hunger had subsided and he had cleared the pit so that in one end the bare concrete was visible, blackened and encrusted with an indefinable burnt substance that scaled away under the shovel and showed green beneath.

  He was shoveling faster, approaching desperation as the residue of unsifted ashes diminished, when Gifford showed up, badly winded from his climb up the mountain. Legwater stopped and watched him come across the little clearing, his shoes weighted with clay, his face inflamed with a red scowl. When he got to the pit Legwater leaned on the shovel and looked up at him. Well, he said, you want shares I reckon? After I done …

  Idjit, Gifford said. Goddamn, what a idjit. He was standing on the concrete rim now looking down at the humane officer gaunt and fantastically powdered with ash, and looking at the great heaps of ashes and the screen, the bedroll, rucksack, shotgun.

  You think so? Legwater said.

  I know so. He wadn’t no war hero. It ain’t for sure it was even him, but if it was he never had no—no thing in his head.

  I’ll be the jedge of that, Legwater said, bending with his shovel.

  Gifford watched him, moving around to the upwind side to keep clear of the dust. In a few minutes the humane officer leaped from the pit and began shoveling the new ashes onto the screen, then shaking it back and forth to sift them through, a fevered look in his eye like some wild spodomantic sage divining in driven haste the fate of whole galaxies against their imminent ruin. The constable lit a cigarette and leaned back against the tree.