Outer Dark (16 page)

It’s a serious thing, the preacher said. I don’t advocate it save under the strongest extremes.

Well if you’d hush about it …

Tore up with guilt. The preacher nodded sad and negative. Plumb tore up with it.

We all seen him on that rock.

How come ye to do it, son?

Holme looked about him for some sign of sanity. Shit, he said.

I believe we done mentioned it to ye oncet about that barnyard talk.

The preacher had begun to gesture inanely with his cane. Boys I believe he’s plumb eat up with the devil in him. But don’t hang him.

Ort to thow him off the bluff the way he done Vernon, Billy said.

How far down is it? the preacher was interested.

Too far to walk back.

Billy don’t know what all to tell his maw, Reverend. He just don’t have no notion how to go about tellin her. Ain’t that right Billy?

I don’t know what none of us is goin to tell Greene come upon his hogs. They must of been two hunnerd head fell off in the river.

Don’t flang him off the bluff, boys, the preacher said. I believe ye’d be better to hang him as that.

I believe we would too.

What do you say Billy? He’s your brother.

I believe I’d rest easier. I believe Vernon would of wanted it thataway.

Lessen he’s got some choice.

They looked at Holme.

Vernon never had none, Billy said.

He’s right about that.

Well he probably don’t care noway. You got any particulars, stranger? Strung up or flang off in the river?

Holme wiped his palms down the sides of his overall legs and looked about him with wide eyes.

Let’s hang him if he don’t care. I ain’t never seen nobody hung.

We ain’t got nary rope.

They stopped and looked from one to the other.

Rope?

Cain’t hang him thout a rope.

They’s one in the wagon. Cecil’s got one in the wagon.

They Lord he’ll be ten mile up the river fore we catch him.

He’ll be stopped makin camp now late as it is. We hurry we can get up there and get him hung afore dark.

Let’s just thow him off the bluff and be done with it.

Naw, that ain’t no way to do. Besides Billy wants him hung.

I believe Vernon would of wanted it thataway, Billy said.

I believe old Greene’ll be comforted some too.

Don’t flang him off the bluff, boys. Tain’t christian.

Let’s go then.

Hump up there, stranger, and let’s go get hung.

They started up the river.

The preacher fell in alongside Holme. What place of devilment you hail from, mister? he asked.

Holme looked at him wearily. I don’t come from no place of devilment, he said. I come from Johnson County.

Never heard tell of it. You a christian?

Yes.

I cain’t say as you’ve much took on the look of one.

It ain’t marked you a whole lot to notice neither, Holme said.

Don’t disperge the cloth son, the preacher said. Don’t disperge the cloth.

Cloth’s ass, Holme said.

Well now, said the preacher, what have we here. I believe it’s a hard enough case to give Jehovah hisself the witherins.

Holme didn’t answer.

Might be somethin of a comfort to have a preacher there at your final hour, the preacher went on. If your heart ain’t just scabbed over with sin.

You don’t look like much of a preacher to me, Holme said.

I’ll bet I don’t, the preacher said. I’d just bet I don’t at that, to you.

Holme trudged along over the chopped ground. They were following the swath the hogs had made.

Where was it you was a-goin anyways? the preacher asked.

Just on to the next town.

Guess you never reckoned when ye set out this mornin that you was on your way to be hung. Did ye?

Holme ignored him.

A feller never knows what day’ll be his last in this vale of tears. You been baptized?

Why don’t you go on and walk somewheres else? Holme said.

I guess a feller mires up so deep in sin after a while he don’t want to hear nothin about grace and salvation. Not even a feller about to be hung dead.

It ain’t no use, Reverend. He’s too mean to be saved.

Most probably you right, the reverend said. But I sure would love to do it if I could. It’d make a jimdandy sermon. I saved a blind feller once wanted to curse God for his affliction. You all want to hear that’n? It’s a strong sermon. I like to save it for best.

Tell it, Reverend.

I won’t tell it all. This blind feller hollered out one time and said: Looky here at me, blind and all. I guess you reckon I ort to love Jesus.

Well neighbor, I says, I believe ye ort. He give ye eyes to see and then he tuck em away. And maybe you never was much of a christian to start with and he figgered this’d bring ye round. They’s been more than one feller brought to the love of Jesus over the paths of affliction. And what better way than blind? In a world darksome as this’n I believe a blind man ort to be better sighted than most. I believe it’s got a good deal to recommend it. The grace of God don’t rest easy on a man. It can blind him easy as not. It can bend him and make him crooked. And who did Jesus love, friends? The lame the halt and the blind, that’s who. Them is the ones scarred with God’s mercy. Stricken with his love. Ever legless fool and old blind mess like you is a flower in the garden of God. Amen. I told him that.

That’s a right pretty sermon, Reverend.

I wisht Vernon could of heard it.

He knelt right there and was saved on the spot, the reverend said.

The path had come down from the high bluffs and was going along the river and already it was late afternoon. Holme looked about, stepped past the preacher and the drover next him and jumped.

It was a long way down and when he hit he felt something tear in his leg. He came up with a mouthful of muddy water and spat and turned. They were aligned along the bluff watching him. The preacher had both hands aloft, gesturing. The drovers against the pale sky were small, erect, simian shapes. The seven of them watched him. He could hear the preacher’s voice. The current was carrying him on and his leg was hurting but he kept watching them and after a while they were very small and then they turned and went on along the bluff with no order rank or valence to anything in the shapen world.

W
HAT DISCORDANT vespers do the tinker’s goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through the windy recrements of day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens spoorless increate and anathema. Hounded by grief, by guilt, or like this cheerless vendor clamored at heel through wood and fen by his own querulous and inconsolable wares in perennial tin malediction
.

In the clearing he set down his cart and circled the remains of a fire out of which rose a slender stem of smoke like the pistil of a burnt flower, his thin nose constricted and eyes wary. Shapes of risen sleepers lay in the pressed and poisoned grass. He set out the child and gathered wood and built back the fire. Dark fell and bats came to hunt the glade, crossing above the figure sulking there on his gaunt shanks like little voiceless souls. Then they went away. A fox stopped barking. The tinker in his mothgnawn blanket nodded. The child slept
.

The three men when they came might have risen from the ground. The tinker could not account for them. They gathered about the fire and looked down at him. One had a rifle and was smiling. Howdy, the tinker said
.

HOLME CAME
limping out of the woods and crossed a small field toward the light, insects rising out of the dark and breaking on his face like rain and his fingers trailing in the tops of the wet sedge. He could hear no sound save a faint moaning like the wind but there was no wind. When he entered the glade he could see men seated about the fire and he hobbled on, one hand raised, into the firelight. When he saw what figures warmed there he was already among them and it was too late. There were three of them and there was a child squatting in the dust and beyond them the tinker’s cart with the hung pans catching the light like the baleful eyes of some outsized and mute and mindless jury assembled there hurriedly against his coming.

Howdy, said the bearded one. Ain’t seen ye for a while.

He looked at them. They wore the same clothes, sat in the same attitudes, endowed with a dream’s redundancy. Like revenants that reoccur in lands laid waste with fever: spectral, palpable as stone. He looked at the child. It had a healed burn all down one side of it and the skin was papery and wrinkled like an old man’s. It was naked and half coated with dust so that it seemed lightly furred and when it turned to look up at him he saw one eyeless and angry red socket like a stokehole to a brain in flames. He looked away.

Set and rest a spell, the man said.

Holme squatted, favoring his off leg. The child kept watching him.

Whose youngern? he said.

Harmon guffawed and slapped his thigh.

What happent to his eye? Holme said.

What eye.

His eye. He gestured. The one he ain’t got.

I reckon he must of lost it somewheres. He still got one.

He ort to have two.

Maybe he ort to have more’n that. Some folks has two and cain’t see.

Holme didn’t say anything.

I reckon that tinker might know what happent to it.

What tinker?

That’n in yan tree, said Harmon, pointing with the rifle.

Hush. Don’t pay him no mind mister. What did ye do to your leg there?

Nothin.

The bearded one was tunneling gouts of mud from the welt of his boot with a stick. Well, I see ye didn’t have no trouble findin us.

I wasn’t huntin ye.

You got here all right for somebody bound elsewhere.

I wasn’t bound nowheres. I just seen the fire.

I like to keep a good fire. A man never knows what all might chance along. Does he?

No.

No. Anything’s liable to warsh up. From nowheres nowhere bound.

Where are you bound? Holme said.

I ain’t, the man said. By nothin. He looked up at Holme. We ain’t hard to find. Oncet you’ve found us.

Holme looked away. His sweatblistered forehead shone in the firelight. He looked toward the tinker’s cart and he looked at the child. Where’s she at? he said.

Who’s that?

My sister.

Ah, said the man. The one run off with that tinker.

Them’s his traps yander.

The bearded one turned his head slightly and looked and turned back. Aye, he said. That’n you used to trade with.

I never give him no chap, Holme said. I just told her that.

Maybe thisn’s some other chap.

It ain’t nothin to me.

The bearded one raked a gobbet of clay from his stick and cast it into the fire. You know what I figure? he said.

What.

I figure you got this thing here in her belly your own self and then laid it off on that tinker.

I never laid nothin off on no tinker.

I reckon you figured he’d keep him hid for ye.

I never figured nothin.

What did ye have to give him?

I never give nobody nothin. I never had nothin.

Never figured nothin, never had nothin, never was nothin, the man said. He was looking at nothing at all. The mute one seemed to sleep, crouched at the man’s right with his arms dangling between his knees like something waiting to be wakened and fed.

What are you? Holme muttered.

What?

He said it again, sullenly.

The bearded one smiled. Ah, he said. Now. We’ve heard that before, ain’t we?

You ain’t nothin to me.

But the man didn’t seem to hear. He nodded as if spoken by other voices. He didn’t look at Holme.

You never did say what you done with your sister.

I never done nothin with her.

Where’s she at?

I don’t know. She run off.

You done told that.

It ain’t nothin to you.

I’ll be the judge of that.

Harmon turned, his cheek against the upright rifle-barrel. He smiled dreamily.

I reckon little sister’s just a little further on up the road, ain’t she? the man said.

I don’t know. I ain’t seen her.

No.

I allowed maybe you had, Holme said. You seem to know everbody’s business.

I guess it ain’t nothin to me. Is that right?

Holme didn’t answer.

The man wiped the stick and poked it into the fire and stretched forth his boot. Hand him here, he said.

What?

Hand him here. Yan chap.

Holme didn’t move. The child had not stopped watching him.

Unless you’d rather for Harmon to.

He looked at Harmon and then he bent forward and picked up the child. It made no gesture at all. It dangled from his hands like a dressed rabbit, a gross eldritch doll with ricketsprung legs and one eye opening and closing softly like a naked owl’s. He rose with it and circled the fire and held it out toward the man. The man looked at it a moment and then took it with one hand by its upper arm and placed it between his feet.

What do you want with him? Holme said.

Nothin. No more than you do.

He ain’t nothin to me.

No.

Where’s that tinker at if he was raisin him?

He’s all raised out. He cain’t raise no more.

You don’t need him.

Water in the summer and fire in the winter is all the need I need. We ain’t talkin about what I need. He spat across the child’s head into the fire and a thin chain of sparks ascended in the graygreen smoke. That ain’t what’s concerned.

No.

You ain’t no different from the rest. From any man borned and raised and have his own and die. They ain’t one man in three got even a black suit to die in.

Holme stood with his feet together and his hands at his sides like one arraigned.

What’s his name? the man said.

I don’t know.

He ain’t got nary’n.

No. I don’t reckon. I don’t know.

They say people in hell ain’t got names. But they had to be called somethin to get sent there. Didn’t they.

That tinker might of named him.

It wasn’t his to name. Besides names dies with the namers. A dead man’s dog ain’t got a name. He reached and drew from his boot a slender knife.

Holme seemed to be speaking to something in the night beyond them all. My sister would take him, he said. That chap. We could find her and she’d take him.

Yes, the man said.

I been huntin her.

Harmon was watching the man. Even the mute one stirred. The man took hold of the child and lifted it up. It was watching the fire. Holme saw the blade wink in the light like a long cat’s eye slant and malevolent and a dark smile erupted on the child’s throat and went all broken down the front of it. The child made no sound. It hung there with its one eye glazing over like a wet stone and the black blood pumping down its naked belly. The mute one knelt forward. He was drooling and making little whimpering noises in his throat. He knelt with his hands outstretched and his nostrils rimpled delicately. The man handed him the child and he seized it up, looked once at Holme with witless eyes, and buried his moaning face in its throat.