The Orchard Keeper (1965) (12 page)

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 his 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.

Later when they got a truck down and winched the wreck out the lid fell off and glass poured into the creek—someone said later for thirty minutes—for a long time anyway. There were even two or three jars unbroken, which pleased Gifford—evidence, he said …

It was a Plymouth, a 33 coupe; there was a hole in
the right front tire you could put three fingers in. Other than that there was nothing remarkable about it except that it was wrecked in Red Branch with the remains of a load of whiskey in the back end.

Gifford examined the ground carefully, walking back and forth along the bank as if he had lost something there. He had written the license number down on a slip of paper but on looking closer saw that they were last year’s plates repainted and threw the paper away in disgust.

Looks to me like he’d of been hurt, Legwater was saying. They.

They what?

Them, Gifford said. They’s two of em.

You mean tracks? Them’s most likely Oliver’s; he come down to see was they anybody hurt …

Cept he never clumb down into the creek to … See? Here … Gifford paused, staring at the ground. After a long minute he looked up at Legwater. Earl, he said, I reckon you’re right.

Figured I was …

Yep. The othern wadn’t in the car. He jest come along and got whoever was in out.

It wadn’t Oliver, Legwater persisted. He never even seen nobody around when he come by. He …

Ain’t talkin about him, the constable said. Come on, if you’re ready.

It had begun to rain a little by then.

Believe it may warm up for a spell, Gifford said. If it don’t turn snow.

In the store the old men gathered, occupying for endless hours the creaking milkcases, speaking slowly and with conviction upon matters of profound inconsequence,
eying the dull red bulb of the stove with their watery vision. Shrouded in their dark coats they had a vulturous look about them, their faces wasted and thin, their skin dry and papery as a lizard’s. John Shell, looking like nothing so much as an ill-assembled manikin of bones on which clothes were hung in sagging dusty folds, his wrists protruding like weathered sticks from his flapping prelate sleeves, John Shell unhinged his toothless jaw with effort, a slight audible creaking sound, to speak his one pronouncement: It ain’t so much that as it is one thing’n another.

An assemblage of nods to this. In the glass cases roaches scuttled, a dry rattling sound as they traversed the candy in broken ranks, scaled the glass with licoriced feet, their segmented bellies yellow and flat. Summer and winter they patrolled the candy case, inspected handkerchiefs, socks, cigars. Occasionally too they invaded the meat case, a medicinal white affair rusted from sweat where the lower edge of the glass was mortised, so that brown stains like tobacco spit or worse seeped down the enamel, but they soon perished here from the cold. Their corpses lay in attitudes of repose all along the little scupper to the front of the case.

Leaning against the case John Wesley could see the car pull in alongside the rusty orange gas pump and the two men get out. When they came through the door the nasal clacking voices paused, the chorus of elders looking up, down, back to the stove. Some fumbled knives from their overalls and fell to whittling idly on their milkcases. John Shell struggled to his feet, opened the stove door with kerchiefed hand, dropped in a small chunk of coal from the hod. A draft of sparks scurried upwards. He spat assertively at them and clanked the loose iron door closed.