Outer Dark (8 page)

The woman flung her head above the stove again. O yes, she said. That’s nice for company now ain’t it?

Goddamn you and some company both, the man said, rising. Don’t come on with that fancy shit to me about some company. If you looked to your own a little better and companied less …

What? she said, turning. What? You’ve got the nerve to thow my family up to me?

Your family? Why damn you and your family to everlasting shit. You know what I’m talkin about …

She had risen from the table with her parcel beneath one arm and moved to the nearest wall, watching this tableau with widening eyes. The spoon made a vicious slicing sound, crossing the room in a wheel of sprayed stew. The man scooped up one of the bricks of butter and let fly with it. It hung in a yellow blob on the warmer door for a moment before it dropped with a hiss to the top of the stove.

You leave my butter alone, the woman said. Don’t you lay a hand on that butter.

She eased her way along the wall to the door and got the handle under her fingers, turned it, backing carefully out as it opened. She saw the man smile. The last thing she saw before she turned and ran was the board of butter aloft, the woman screaming. As she crossed the yard the breakage mounted crash on crash into a final crescendo of shattered glass and then silence in which she could hear stricken sobs. She did not look back. When she reached the road she slowed to a fast walk and soon she was limping along with one hand to her side and bent against the stitch of pain there. When she had put two bends in the road between her and the house she stopped to rest in the grass at the roadside until the pain was gone. She was very hungry. She wanted to wait for the chance of a wagon coming but after she had waited a long time and no wagon came she went on again.

She passed the last of the cleared land and the road went down into a deep and marshy wood. Cattails and arrowheads grew in the ditches and in the stands of pollenstained water where sunning turtles tilted from stones and logs at her approach. She went this way for miles. It was late afternoon before she came to any house at all and it a slattern shack all but hidden among the trees.

And she could not have said to what sex belonged the stooped and hooded anthropoid that came muttering down the fence toward her. In one hand a hoe handled crudely with a sapling stave, an aged face and erupting from beneath some kind of hat lank hair all hung with clots like a sheep’s scut, stumbling along in huge brogans and overalls. She stopped at the sight of this apparition. The road went in deep woods and constant damp and the house was grown with a rich velour of moss and lichen and brooded in a palpable miasma of rot. Chickens had so scratched the soil from the yard that knobs and knees of treeroots stood everywhere in grotesque configuration up out of the earth like some gathering of the mad laid suddenly bare in all their writhen attitudes of pain. She waited. It was an old woman spoke to her:

I’ve not been a-hoein. This here is just to kill snakes with.

She nodded.

I don’t ast nobody’s sayso for what all I do but I’d not have ye to think I’d been a-hoein.

Yes, she said.

I don’t hold with breakin the sabbath and don’t care to associate with them that does.

It ain’t sunday, she said.

It’s what?

It ain’t sunday today, she said.

The old woman peered at her strangely. I don’t believe you been saved have ye? she said.

I don’t know.

Ah, the old woman said, one of them. She tamped down a small piece of earth with the flat of the hoe.

You live here, I reckon.

The old woman looked up. I have lived here nigh on to forty-seven year. Since I was married.

It’s a nice cool place here, she said.

O yes. This is a shady spot here. I don’t allow no wood cut near the house.

She could see that the porch of the house was ricked end to end with cords of stovewood and the one window which faced them held back in webbed and dusty tiers more wood yet. Is it just you and the mister at home now? she said.

Earl died, she said.

Oh.

I just despise a snake don’t you?

Yes mam.

I’m like my granny that way. She always said what she despised worst in the world was snakes hounds and sorry women.

Yes mam.

I won’t have a hound on the place.

No mam.

The old woman drew up the wings of her nose between her thumb and forefinger and sneezed forth a spray of mucous and wiped her fingers on the overalls she wore.

Earl’s daddy used to keep half a holler full of old beat-up hounds. He had to keep Earl’s too. I won’t have one on the place. Wantin to lay out half the night runnin in the woods with a bunch of dogs like somethin crazy. Ain’t a bit of use in the world somebody puttin up with such as that. I run his daddy off too. Told him he’d run with hounds so hard and long he’d took on the look of one let alone the smell. And him a squire. They wasn’t no common people but I declare if they didn’t have some common habits among em. He’s a squire ye know. Course that never kept his daughter from runnin off with a no-account that sent her back big in the belly and thin in the shanks and nary word from him ever from that day to this. Or doomsday if ye wanted to wait. How far are ye goin?

Just up the road. I’m travelin.

Where to?

Well. I mean I’m not goin to just one place in particular.

The old woman cocked her elf’s face and peered at her with eyes gone near colorless with years. The thin and ropy hands with which she clutched the handle of the hoe opened and closed. Maybe you’re goin to several places in particular then, she said.

No mam. Not no special places. I’m a-huntin somebody.

Who’s that?

Just somebody. This feller.

The old woman’s eyes went to her belly and back again.

She straightened herself and tucked the bundle of clothes beneath one arm.

Feller, the old woman said. Where’s he got to?

I wisht I knowed.

The old woman nodded. It’s a goodly sizeable world to set out huntin somebody in.

That’s God’s truth.

I hope ye luck anyways.

I thank ye.

The old woman nodded again and tapped the ground with her hoe.

Well I guess I’d best be gettin on.

Needn’t to be in no hurry. Come up to the house.

Well.

I got fresh cornbread from yesterday evenin and a pot of greens and fatmeat if you’re hungry a-tall. Give ye a glass of cool buttermilk anyway.

Well. If you don’t care.

Shoo. Come along.

She followed the old woman up a trench of a path toward the house, the old woman poking at the knobby-roots reared out of the red earth as if testing for hostile life. When they entered the house it was into nigh total dark, past ricks of wood stacked to the low ceiling and little more than a cat’s passage between them, down another corridor walled in by the sawn dowel ends of sticks and split logs until they came to the kitchen, likewise crammed with wood in every available space.

Get ye a chair, the woman said.

Thank ye.

She was at the stove, turning fire up out of the dead gray ashes. Are ye not married? she said.

No mam.

She added wood. She lifted the lid from a pot crusted with blackened orts and tilted it for inspection. Her voice hollow and chambered: Where’s your youngern.

What?

I said where’s your youngern.

I’ve not got nary.

The babe, the babe, the old woman crooned.

They ain’t nary’n.

Hah, said the old woman. Bagged for the river trade I’d judge. Yon sow there might make ye a travelin mate that’s downed her hoggets save one.

She sat very straight in the chair. Cradled among stove-wood against the wall was a sleeping hog she had not seen. The old woman turned, a small bent androgyne gesturing with a black spoon, waiting.

That’s a lie what you said, the girl whispered hoarsely. I never. He was took from me. A chap. I’m a-huntin him.

Your hand to God, the old woman said.

She raised her hand slightly from the table. Yes, she said.

Aye. Where’s he at now?

This here tinker has got him.

Tinker.

Yes mam. He come to the house while I was confinin. We’d been there four months or more and they’d not been nary tinker a-tall come round.

Ah. And stoled him away. I always heard they was bad about it.

She stirred uneasily in her chair. No mam, she said. My brother give it to him. Or sold it one. He tried to let on like it died but I caught him in that lie and he owned up what he done.

Your brother?

Yes mam.

And where’s he at?

I don’t know.

You’ve not lawed him?

No mam.

You ort to’ve.

Well. He’s family.

The old woman shook her head. When was it all? she said.

Just March or April. I forgot. She looked up. The old woman was looking past her, weighing the spoon in her hand.

I think most likely it was in March.

And you was a-nursin him.

No mam. I never had the chancet. I never even seen him.

The old woman looked down at her. You goin to have to find him or let him be. One or t’other.

Yes mam.

And you best grease them paps.

Yes mam, she said.

Aye, said the old woman. I got some I’ll give ye. She opened the firebox door and poked and spat among the flames and clanged it shut again. The sow reared half up and regarded them with narrow pink eyes and a look of hostile cunning. The old woman looked to her pot and then brought down a pitcher of buttermilk from her cupboard and a glass. I believe everbody loves a good drink of buttermilk, she said. Don’t you?

Yes mam, she said. She was watching a woodrat that had come from a pile of kindling along the wall and now paused to scratch with one tiny hindfoot.

Yander goes a old rat, she said.

I don’t have no rats in my house, the old woman said simply.

The rat looked at them and went on across the woodpile and from sight.

I cain’t abide varmints of no description.

She nodded. I’m like you, she said.

I’ll have us some supper here directly.

Thank ye, she said, the glass of milk in her hand, wearing a clown’s mouth of it. It had darkened in the room and fire showed thin and pink in the joints of the stove’s iron carriage.

They’s a tinker comes thew here be it ever so little often, the old woman said. Got a jenny to pull his traps and smokes stogies. Does that favor him?

I don’t know. I ain’t never seen him.

The old woman paused midway unscrewing a tin of snuff. She did not look up. After a minute she undid the tin and took a pinch of the tobacco between her fingers and placed it in her lower lip. Do ye dip? she said.

No mam. I’ve not took it up.

She nodded and put the lid back and replaced the tin in her shirt pocket. If you ain’t never seen him, she said, how do you expect to know him when ye do.

Well, she said, I don’t believe he had no jenny.

Most don’t.

He sells them books.

What books.

Them nasty books.

Most do. I thought you said he come to the house.

He did come to it but he never come in it.

Did you want some more buttermilk?

No thank ye mam. I’ve a plenty.

It’s a poor lot wanderin about thataway, said the old woman.

They ain’t no help for it.

And if ye find him what?

I’ll just tell him. I’ll tell him I want my chap. She was gesturing strangely in the air with one hand. The old woman watched her. Milk ran from the dark cloth she wore, the hand subsided into her lap again like a falling bird. I’d of wanted to see it anyways, she said. Even if it had of died.

The old woman nodded and wiped the corners of her mouth each in turn with the pursed web of her thumb. Aye, she said. Reach them plates down from behind ye now.

Yes mam.

Did you come thew Well’s Station?

Yes mam. This mornin. I seen two fellers hung in a tree.

That was yesterday.

No mam. It was this mornin.

I reckon they still there then. They was supposed to of killed old man Salter over there.

It sinkened me in my heart to see it.

Yes. Here. I’ll get the lamp directly.

Ain’t you scared by yourself?

Some. Sometimes. Ain’t you?

Yes mam. I always was scared. Even when they wasn’t nobody bein murdered nowheres.

HE CAME DOWN
out of the kept land and into a sunless wood where the road curved dark and cool, overlaid with immense ferns, trees hung with gray moss like hag’s hair, and in this green and weeping fastness birdcalls he had not heard before. He could see no tracks in the packed sand he trod and he left none. Sometime in the afternoon he came upon a cabin and upon the veranda an old bearded man seated with a cane tilted across one knee. Two hounds watched him with bleeding eyes, muzzles flat to the scoured and grassless soil in the yard. He slowed his steps and raised one hand. The old man did not move for a minute and then his hand came slowly from his lap palmoutward no higher than his chest and returned without pausing.

Howdy, he said.

Howdy, said the old man, a voice remote and soft.

I hate to bother anybody but I was wonderin could I might get a sup of water from ye.

Wouldn’t turn Satan away for a drink, the old man said. Come up.

Thank ye, he said, coming through the yard, the hounds rising surly and mistrustful and moving away.

Got a well full, the man said. Just round back. Help yourself.

Thank ye, he said again, going on with a final nod, along the side of the house to the rear where an iron pump stood on the end of a pipe a foot above the well cover, as if the ground had settled and left this shank exposed. He took up the handle and cranked it and immediately the water came up clear and full and gorged the pump’s tongue and cascaded into a bucket at his feet. He watched a spider move in its web across the flume inspecting from drop to drop the water beading there. He took the gourd from the bucket and rinsed and filled it and drank. The water was cold and sweet with a faint taste of iron. He drank two dipperfuls and passed the back of his hand across his mouth and looked about him. A small garden grubbed out of the loamy soil and beyond that an impenetrable wall of poison ivy. Random stands of grass, scraggly and wheatcolored. A waste of blue clay where washwater was thrown.

The back of the house was windowless. There was a door with no handle and a stovepipe that leaned from a hole hacked through the wall with an axe. There was no sign of stock, not so much as a chicken. Holme would have said maybe it was whiskey, but it wasn’t whiskey.

He went back to the man on the porch. That’s fine water, he said.

The old man turned and looked down at him. Yes, he said. Tis. Know how deep that well is?

No. Fifty foot?

Not even fifteen. It’s actual springwater. Used to be a spring just back of here but it dried up or sunk under the ground or somethin. Sunk, I reckon. Year of the harrykin. Blowed my chimley down. Fell out in the yard and left a big hole in the side of the house. I was settin there watchin the fire and I blinked and next thing I was lookin outside. Come mornin I went to the spring and it weren’t there. So I got me a well now. Don’t need all that there pump but I chancet to come by it. Good water though.

Yes it is.

Seems like everthing I get around runs off in the ground somewheres and I got to go after it.

You live here by yourself?

Not exactly. I got two hounds and a ten-gauge double-barrel that keeps me company. They’s lots of meanness in these parts and I ain’t the least of it.

Holme looked away. The old man tilted forward in his chair and stroked his beard and squinted.

Live by yourself and you bound to talk to yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you’re light in the head. But I reckon it’s all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don’t understand and cain’t answer if he did.

Yes, Holme said.

Aye, said the old man. He tilted his chair back against the side of the house once more. It was very quiet. The hounds lay like plaster dogs in a garden.

Well, I thank ye for the drink, Holme said.

Best not be in no rush, the man said.

Well, I got to be gettin on.

Whereabouts is it you’re headed?

Just up the road. I’m a-huntin work.

I doubt you can make it afore nightfall.

Make what?

Preston Flats. It’s about fourteen mile.

What’s between here and it?

The old man gestured toward the woods. Just like you see. More of it. They’s one more house. About two mile down.

Who lives there?

They don’t nobody live there now. Used to be a minktrapper lived there but he got snakebit and died. Been snakebit afore and thowed it off. This’n got him in the neck. When they found him he was kneelin down like somebody fixin to pray. Stiff as a locust post. That’s about eight year ago.

They Lord, Holme said.

Well. The old man recrossed his legs. I never did like him much anyways. Poisoned two of my dogs.

How come him to do that?

I don’t know. Mayhaps he never meant to. He used to poison for varmints. They said they had to break ever bone in his body to get him laid out in his box. Coroner took a sixpound maul to him.

Holme looked at him in dull wonder and the old man looked at the steaming woods beyond the road. He lifted a twist of tobacco from the bib of his overalls and paused with it in his hand while he consulted pockets for his knife.

Chew? he said.

I thank ye, Holme said. I ain’t never took it up.

The old man pared away a plug and crammed it in his mouth. Do ye drink? he asked.

I’ve been knowed to, Holme said.

I’d offer was I able but I ain’t. Ye ain’t got nary little drink tucked away in your poke have ye?

I wisht I did, Holme said.

Aye, the old man said. Clostest whiskey to here is a old nigger woman on Smith Creek and it ain’t good. Sides which they’s genly a bunch of mean bucks lays out down there drunk. Got knives ye could lean on. Last time I was down there you couldn’t of stirred em with a stick. Makes a feller nervous. He shifted the cane to the other knee and spat. Don’t it you?

I expect it would.

Listen yander, he said, tilting his head.

What’s that? said Holme.

Listen.

The dogs lifted their long faces and regarded one another.

Yander they go, the old man said, pointing.

They watched a high and trembling wedge of geese drift down the sky with diminishing howls.

Used to hunt them things for a livin afore it was outlawed, the old man said. That was a long time ago. Fore you was borned I reckon. You ain’t no game warden are ye?

No, Holme said.

Didn’t figure ye was. You ever see a four-gauge shotgun?

No. Not to recollect it I ain’t.

The old man rose from his chair. Come in till I show ye one, he said.

He led the way into the house, a two-room board shack sparsely furnished with miscellaneous chairs, an iron bedstead. It smelled stale and damp. On the lower walls grew scalloped shelves of fungus and over the untrod parts of the floor lay a graygreen mold like rotting fur. There was a rattlesnake skin almost the length of the room tacked above the fireplace. The old man watched him watch. I ain’t got nary now, he said.

What?

Snakes. I’m out. That’n there was the biggest. Biggest anybody ever seen or heard tell of either.

I wouldn’t dispute it, Holme said.

He was eight foot seven inches and had seventeen rattles. Big in the middle to where ye couldn’t get your hands around him. Come back here.

They made their way through a maze of crates, piles of rags and paper, a stack of warped and mildewed lumber. Standing in the corner of the room was a punt gun some seven feet long which the old man reached and handed out to him. Holme took it and looked it over. It was crudely stocked with some porous swamp wood and encrusted with a yellow corrosion that looked and smelled of sulphur.

What ye done was to lay it acrost the front end of your skiff and drift down on em, the old man said. You’d pile it up with grass and float down and when ye got to about forty yards out touch her off into the thickest of em. See here. He took the gun from Holme and turned it. On the underside was an eyebolt brazed to the barrel. Ye had ye a landyard here, he said. To take up the kick. He cocked the huge serpentine hammer and let it fall. It made a dull wooden sound. She’s a little rusty but she’ll fire yet. You can charge her as heavy as you’ve got stomach for it. I’ve killed as high as a dozen ducks with one lick countin cripples I run down. They bought fifty cents apiece in them days and that was good money. I’d be a rich man today if I’d not blowed it in on whores and whiskey.

He set the gun back in the corner. Holme looked about him vaguely. On a shelf some dusty jars filled with what looked like the segmented husks of larvae.

You don’t pick ary guitar or banjer do ye?

No, Holme said.

If’n ye did I’d give ye one of them there rattles to put in it.

Rattles.

Them snakes rattles yander. Folks that picks guitar or banjer are all the time puttin em in their guitar or banjer. You say you don’t play none?

I ain’t never tried my hand at it.

Some folks has a sleight for music and some ain’t. My granddaddy they claimed could play a fiddle and he never seen one.

None of us never took it up, Holme said.

I’d show ye snakes but I ain’t got nary just now. Old big’n yander’s the one got me started. Feller offered to give me ten dollars for the hide and I told him I’d try and get him one like it but I didn’t want to sell that’n. So then he ast me could I get him one live and I thought about that a little and I told him yes anyways. So he says he’ll take all I can get at a dollar a foot and if I come up on anothern the size of old big’n yander he’ll give double for it. But I ain’t never seen the like of him again. Might if I live long enough. I use a wiresnare on a pole to hunt my snakes with. It ain’t good now. Spring and fall is best times. Spring ye can smoke em out and fall they lay around to where ye can pick em up with your hands pret-near. I hunt them moccasins too when I can see one but they don’t pay as good and they more trouble. The old man spat into the barren fireplace and wiped his chin and looked about him with a kind of demented enthusiasm.

Well, Holme said, I thank ye for the water and all …

Shoo, come out on the porch and set a while. Ye ain’t set a-tall.

Well just for a minute.

They went onto the porch and the old man took his rocker and pointed out a chair to Holme. Holme sat and folded his hands in his lap and the old man began to rock vigorously in the rocker, one loose leg sucking in and out of its hole with a dull pumping sound.

You know snakes is supposed to be bad luck, he said, but they must have some good in em on account of them old geechee snake doctors uses em all the time for medicines. Unless ye was to say that kind of doctorin was the devil’s work. But the devil don’t do doctorin does he? That’s where a preacher cain’t answer ye. Cause even a preacher won’t say they cain’t help nor cure ye. I’ve knowed em to slip off in the swamp theirselves for a little fixin of somethin another when they wasn’t nothin else and them poorly. Ain’t you?

I reckon, Holme said.

Sure, the old man said. Even a snake ain’t all bad. They’s put here for some purpose. I believe they’s purpose to everthing. Don’t you believe thataway?

The old man had leaned forward in his rocker and was watching Holme with an intent look, his thumb and forefinger in his beard routing the small life it harbored.

I don’t know, Holme said. I ain’t never much studied it.

No. Well. I ain’t much neither but that’s the way I believe. The more I study a thing the more I get it backards. Study long and ye study wrong. That’s what a old rifleshooter told me oncet beat me out of half a beef in a rifleshoot. I know things I ain’t never studied. I know things I ain’t never even thought of.

Holme nodded dully. I got to get on, he said.

Stay a spell, the old man said. Ain’t no need to rush off.

Well, I best get on.

Just stay on, the old man said. I’ll learn ye snakehuntin. You look to me like a young feller who’d not be afeared of em.

Maybe, Holme said. But I got to get on.

You got kin over twards the flats?

No.

Ain’t married are ye?

No.

Might’s well stay on.

The praying minktrapper materialized for him out of the glare of the sun like some trembling penitent boiling in the heat there, a shimmering image beyond which the shape of the forest rose likewise veered and buckling. He blinked his eyes and stood from the chair. I thank ye kindly, he said, but I got some things needs looked after.

What’s that?

Holme was stretching with his hands deep in his pockets, rocking a little on his heels. He stopped. What? he said.

I said what is it needs looked after if it’s any of my business.

Holme looked at him. Then he said: I’m huntin a woman.

The old man nodded his head. I cain’t say as I blame ye for that. I live to see the fifth day of October I’ll be sixty-three year old and I …

No, Holme said. My sister. I mean to say I’m a-huntin my sister.

The old man looked up. Where’d you lose her at?

She run off. She’s nineteen year old and towheaded. About so high. Wears a blue dress all the time. Rinthy. That’s her name.

How come her to run off?

I don’t know. She ain’t got right good sense in some ways. She just up and left. I don’t reckon you’ve seen such a person have ye?

Not to notice it I ain’t.

Well.

I had a wife one time used to run off. Like a dog. Best place to hunt em is home again.

She ain’t rightly got a home.

Where’d she run off from then?

Holme had paused with one foot on the top step, one hand spread over his knee. He pursed his lips and spat, dry white spittle. Well, he said, she ain’t actual what you’d call run off. She just left. I figured I’d ast anyways. If she might of come this way. If I don’t find her soon I’m goin to have to start huntin that tinker and I’d purely hate that.

She got ary kin she might of went to?

No. She ain’t got no kin but me.

Kin ain’t nothin but trouble noway.

Yes, Holme said. Trouble when you got em and trouble when you ain’t. I thank ye kindly.

Shoo, the old man said. Just stay on.