Outer Dark (9 page)

Well, I best get on.

The old man took up his cane from where he had leaned it against the side of the house. Well, he said, come back when ye can stay longer.

I will, he said. He went down the steps into the yard. The hounds raised their eyes to watch him go. He half turned again at the road and lifted one hand and the old man nodded and made a little motion with his cane.

Thank ye for the water and all, Holme said.

Shoo, said the old man. I wouldn’t turn Satan away for a drink.

T
HE TWO HOUNDS
rose howling from the porch with boar’s hackles and walled eyes and descended into the outer dark. The old man took up his shotgun and peered out through the warped glass of his small window. Three men mounted the steps and one tapped at the door. And who is there? A minister. Pale lamplight falling down the door, the smiling face, black beard, the tautly drawn and dusty suit of black. Light went in a long bright wink upon the knife blade as it sank with a faint breath of gas into his belly. He felt suddenly very cold. The dogs had gone and there was no sound in the night anywhere. Minister? he said. Minister? His assassin smiled upon him with bright teeth, the faces of the other two peering from either shoulder in consubstantial monstrosity, a grim triune that watched wordless, affable. He looked down at the man’s fist cupped against his stomach. The fist rose in an eruption of severed viscera until the blade seized in the junction of his breastbone and he stood disemboweled. He reached to put one hand on the doorjamb. He took a step backwards as if to let them pass
.

HE KEPT WALKING
after the sun was down. There were no more houses. Later a moon came up and the road before him went winding chalky and vaporous through the black woods. Swamp peepers hushed constantly before him and commenced behind as if he moved in a void claustral to sound. He carried a stick with him and prodded each small prone shadow through which he passed but this road held only shapes of things.

When he did reach Preston Flats the town looked not only uninhabited but deserted, as if plague had swept and decimated it. He stood in the center of the square where the tracks of commerce lay fossilized in dried mud all about him, turning, an amphitheatrical figure in that moonwrought waste manacled to a shadow that struggled grossly in the dust.

He hurried on, through the town where houses and buildings in shadow halved the narrow road and his own shape fled nimbly over the roofs, on into the country past farms remote and dark in the lush fields of early summer, the night cool, a hushed blue world of the dead.

Later he slept in a field, trampling a nest out of the fescue and lying there with his hands between his knees, watching the random motes of birds passing across the moon’s face in the night.

He was gone in the morning before daybreak. The road went from farmland into pine woods. He walked along with his pockets full of old shelled fieldcorn he had gathered and which he chewed with a grim rotary motion of his jaws. Toward noon he came upon a turpentine camp and he turned in here along a log road until he came to a cluster of sheds. A group of negroes were huddled about on the ground eating cold lunches out of pails and there was a man standing there looking at them or past them, somewhere, one foot propped on a log, tapping with a pencil at a tablet he held. When he saw Holme he stopped tapping and looked at him for a moment and then looked away again. Howdy, he said.

How are you? Holme said.

I ain’t worth a shit. You?

Tolerable thank ye. I taken you to be the bossman.

No, I work for these niggers.

Holme sifted the dry corn in his pocket with one hand. I wondered if you might not need some help, he said.

I think I can handle it, the man said. He looked Holme over, the pencil poised in the air. Clark send ye down?

No. I don’t know no Clark.

Is that right? I wisht I didn’t. The son of a bitch has set me crazy.

Holme smiled slightly. The man turned away, looking toward the negroes. They were smoking and talking in low voices. He was jotting figures on the pad.

You ain’t said, Holme said.

Said what?

If you needed help.

I said no.

I mean no kind of help.

No. Go ast Clark.

Where’s he at?

The man looked at him sideways. Are you sure enough lookin for work? he said.

Yessir.

Shit. Well. Well hell, go see Clark anyway. He might can help ye.

Where’s he at?

Home most likely. Dinner time. Ast in town.

All right, Holme said. Which way is it?

Which way is what?

Town.

Well which way did you come?

I don’t know. I just come up the road and seen this here camp and thought I’d ast.

Well they ain’t but one road so if you didn’t come thew town it must be on up the road wouldn’t you reckon?

Thank ye, Holme said. Much obliged.

The man gave him one last half-contemptuous look and then turned and called something to one of the negroes. Holme went on. A dozen steps on the road he turned again. Hey, he said.

The man looked at him in irascible amazement.

What’s that name again? Holme said.

What?

That name. That feller I’m to see in town.

Clark, goddamn it.

Thank ye. He raised a hand slightly in farewell and the man looked at him and shook his head and yelled again at the negroes. Holme went on.

Further on he came to a board culvert through which a small branch sluiced with a cool sucking sound to cross beneath the road. He stood looking down at the water for a moment, then parted the ferns and went into the woods along the branch until he came to a pool. He knelt in the black sand and dipped and spread his hands very white in the clear water, framing his own listing image. From the bib of his overalls he fingered a small piece of soap and a razor in a homesewn leather sheath. He shucked off the straps of his overalls and took off his shirt and began to wash his arms and his chest. With the soap he made a thin and transient lather, honed the razor against the calf of his boot and shaved himself, studying his face in the water and feeling out stray patches of stubble with his fingers. When he had done he splashed water at his face and took up his shirt to dry with before donning it again. He wrapped the soap in a leaf and put it together with the razor in the bib pocket once more and combed his hair briefly with his fingers and rose.

When he did reach town it was past noon, his shirt gone sour again and sweat darkening the white crusts of salt at his sleeves and the cuffs of his trousers which in their raggedness looked blown off to length, tailored by watchdogs. White dust had built upon the wet patches at his knees until he might have knelt in flour and his face and hair were pale with dust save for his eyes which had a smoked look to them. He wandered into the heatstricken square and looked about him, blinking. People were moving from shade to shade beneath the store awnings and across the bright noon clay with leaden steps, moving beneath the blinding heat like toilers in a dream stunned and without purpose. The first man he came upon that was not caught up in this listless tableau was a teamster fitting a wheel. He said him a howdy above his bent back.

Yep, the man said. He ran his forefinger around a tallow tin and brought forth the last of it like cake icing and daubed it over the tapered spline of the axle. Holme watched while he eased the wheel into place and while he fitted the nut and turned it hand tight. He gave the wheel a spin and it went smoothly, dishing slightly and whispering as if it rode through water. Where’s that wrench now? he said. He was feeling along the ground and Holme thought for a minute the man was blind.

It’s under your foot, he said.

The man stopped and looked up at him, then took up the wrench. Ah, he said, here tis. He tightened the nut and then took the cotterpin from the greasecup where he had put it for safekeeping and bent the ends with his thumb and fitted it and reflared it again. Then he tapped the cup into place with the heel of his hand and rose.

Now, he said, his hands coming clawlike up his overall legs and leaving dark and polished trails of grease, what was it again?

I just wanted to ast ye where I might find a feller named Clark.

Just about any place ye look. County’s full of em.

No …

Yes tis.

I mean this’n I’m huntin a feller at the turpentine camp out on the road told me to ast for him.

That’s the old man I reckon. He’s out at Essary’s fixin for the auction. They havin a big auction tomorrow.

Holme blinked hugely in the sun and palmed the sweat from his forehead. I’m huntin work, he said.

Are? Don’t fall asleep there, you’ll tip over and hurt yourself.

Holme squinted his eyes at the man, blinked again at the flat and sunscoured clay about him, turned and started up the street.

The man watched him go for a minute, one elbow propped on the wheel of the wagon. Then he raised his hand in the air. Hey there, he called.

Holme turned.

You, the man said. Hold up a minute.

Holme started slowly back toward him. The man watched him with one hand visored upon his forehead against the sun. You ain’t drunk are ye? he said.

No, Holme said. Just a little give out is all.

Are you sure enough lookin for work?

Yessir.

Well, I never meant to be short with ye. I hate to see a feller act whipped though. Damned if I don’t. You ain’t sick are ye?

No. I ain’t sick. You need a man to work?

Well, no. I just thought you looked like you’d had some kind of trouble or somethin. Walkin off thataway. Kindly bothered me. I ain’t astin ye your business now.

Everbody’s subject to get in a ditch sometime or anothern, Holme said. I ain’t lookin for nobody to be sorry for me.

No, the teamster said.

What about this Clark feller?

Now he might have somethin for ye. Why don’t ye ast at the store what time they expectin him in. It’s a right good ways out there where he’s at and I doubt you’d get back against dark.

All right, Holme said. Which store?

Clark’s.

Thank ye, Holme said. Much obliged.

That’s all right, the teamster said. I hope ye luck.

Much obliged, Holme said again. He nodded and started on up the street and the teamster nodded to him and then to himself more gravely. And say, he called.

Holme turned, still walking.

You talk sharp to that old man you hear?

Holme raised one hand and went on.

The clerk at the store when Holme asked him frowned and said: When you see him comin is when ye can look for him. What is it you wanted with him?

Feller told me to see him about work.

Did?

Two fellers …

Well you can wait on him if it suits ye. He may be back directly.

Holme went out and leaned against a stanchion of the porch and watched the people pass and the little dust-devils that went along the road. He dipped up half a handful of corn from his pocket and began to chew it and then he stopped, his face going from vacancy to disgust, and spat the tasteless meal to the ground. As he did so a man rounding the corner leaped back and began to scream at him.

What? Holme said dumbly. What?

Cholera? Cholera?

Hell, it weren’t nothin but a mouthful of corn.

I lost a whole family to it now don’t lie to me like I ain’t never seen it goddamn it.

Shit, Holme said.

O yes. Five youngerns. Five. And damn near the old lady too. God knows why he didn’t … I taken it back—God knows all right. Why he’s kept that flaptongued bitch down here as long as he has. The flowered crown to all other abominations. A walkin plague in your own house. That’s what’s been visited on me. You sure you ain’t sick?

Shit, Holme said. I ain’t never been sick a day in my life savin the whoopincough one time.

I’d shoot a man went around with the plague like ary mad dog, the man said.

Ain’t nobody plagued, Holme said.

I hope they ain’t, the man said. I pray to God they ain’t. He came on along the edge of the porch inspecting the damp explosion of chewed corn in the dust there and mounted the steps with a wary cast to his eye. Where’s old Clark at? he said. You seen him?

No, Holme said. I’m waitin on him myself.

You sure you ain’t a little off your feed? You look kindly peaked to me.

Holme looked at him and looked away, spat, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I done told ye, he said.

How long you been waitin on Clark?

Just a little bit. He’s out at the auction.

The hell he is. I just come from there. Who told you that?

Clerk in the store here, Holme motioned with his head.

He don’t know shit from applebutter, the man said. Where’s Leroy?

I don’t know no Leroy.

That’s right. You ain’t from around here, the man said. He lunged wildly at a passing wasp. Get away, goddamn it, he said. Where are ye from can I ast ye?

I ain’t from around here, Holme said.

Damn right you ain’t, the man said, and went inside.

When he came out again it was with his back to the door in a receding torrent of invective until he stumbled through onto the porch balancing a handful of crackers and a jar of milk, his mouth full, spraying crumbs and oaths into the dim interior for just another minute before he let the door to. Then he sat on the steps and ate and looked up and down the street from time to time and said no more to Holme. Holme was sitting on the edge of the porch with his feet dangling. He was looking the other way when the man did speak. The man said: Yonder comes the son of a bitch.

He watched. The sign in slant green script broken among the parting boards of the wagon’s side read Clark Auction Company and rising outsized up from the wagon seat rode a man dressed in a filthy white suit and so huge that the mule and the wagon which carried him looked absurd, like a toy rig in a circus bearing some soiled and monolithic clown. He reined in at the corner of the porch directly in front of Holme, stood in the wagon, adjusted his hat and climbed down. The mule turned its head and looked at Holme and looked away again. The man mounted the steps. The clerk came to the door and opened it for him.

He says he ain’t got no butter and tomorrow’s saturday …

Shut up and get back in the store, the man said. Howdy Bud, pretty day ain’t it? Whew. I was lookin for warm weather to hold off some, wasn’t you?

I ain’t interested in the weather, the other said. I want to know who’s goin to …

You know I talked to a feller up the road said he had corn puttin out. What about that?

Aw, you swear he did?—Goddamn it I don’t want to hear about somebody’s goddamned corn I want them people down out of there.

The big man had removed his hat to peel the sweat from his head with a curled forefinger and now he paused and looked at the other. What people is that, Bud? he said.

Goddamn it you know what people. I ain’t havin it. I want shet of em.

And the other, equable, donning again and adjusting his dustcolored hat with the propriety one might a silk derby, saying: Why Bud, you don’t reckon I put em there do ye?

I don’t care who done it I just want em out of there.

When I wasn’t even in town.

I ain’t concerned about that. Them two …

They on your property.

Yes.

In a tree you said it was?

You know where they’re at.

You know the county ain’t authorized no facilities for the removal of dead stock.

The other man’s jaw was working up and down but nothing came out.

How come you ain’t got no butter?

Then it started, an explosion of curses and oaths in such ingenious combinations that the other smiled appreciatively. He turned to Holme and winked. When the man began to run dry and stammer the other put a hand on his shoulder. Easy now Bud, he said. It’s a warm day. Tell you what. I’ll see what the law can do.