The Orchard Keeper (1965) (13 page)

The two men crossed to the dope box in close order,
on the raw subflooring their steps heavy and martial. They selected their drinks and the taller man came over to the counter and spun down a dime. The other one closed the lid and hiked himself up on the box where he sat taking little sips of his drink and smirking strangely at the old men.

John Shell turned to the man at the counter and said, Howdy, Gif.

Howdy, said Gifford, nodding in general to the group. He took a drink of his dope.

Mr Eller came from his chair by the meat block and rang up the dime. Gifford said Howdy to him too and he grunted and went back to his chair taking with him a newspaper from the counter.

Warmin up, Gifford said. Outside the rain had stopped and a cold wind feathered the red water puddles in front of the store. He tilted his head and drank again. A fly rattled electrically against the front window. The fire cricked and moaned in the stove.

Gifford hoisted his dope to eye-level, examined it, his mouth pursed about the unswallowed liquid, swirling the bottle slowly, studying viscosity and bead, suspicious of foreign matter. In the folds of flesh beneath his chin his Adam’s apple rose and fell.

See where somebody lost a old Plymouth down in the creek, he said.

A few looked up. That a fact, someone said.

Yessir, said Gifford. Seems a shame.

Legwater, the county humane officer, finished now with his drink, sat leaning forward, hands palm-downward, sitting on his fingers—an attitude toadlike but for his thinness and the spindle legs dangling over the side of the box. He was swinging them out, banging his heels against the drink case. A longlegged and emaciated toad, then. He kept leering and smirking but no one paid
him any attention. Most of the old men had been there the day he shot two dogs behind the store with a .22 rifle, one of them seven times, it screaming and dragging itself along the fence in the field below the forks while a cluster of children stood watching until they too began screaming.

He said, Sure does … brightly, enjoying himself.

Gifford passed him a sharp glance sideways and he hushed and fell to watching his heels bounce.

I don’t reckon anybody knows whose car that is, do they, Gifford went on.

A few of the elders seemed to be dozing. The fly buzzed at the glass.

I got a towtruck comin to take it on in to town. Sure would like to get that car to the rightful owner.

What kind of car did you say it was? It was the boy leaning against the meat case who spoke.

Gif drained the last of his dope with studied indifference, set the bottle carefully on the counter. He looked at the boy, then he looked at the boy’s feet.

You always wear them slippers, son?

The boy didn’t look down. He started to answer, but he could feel the cords in his throat sticking. He coughed and cleared his throat noisily. His feet felt huge.

Them ain’t enough shoes for wet weather, Gifford said. Then he was moving across the floor. Legwater eased himself down from the drink box and fell in behind him. At the door Gif stopped, the door half open, studying something obliquely overhead. Yessir, he said, looks like it’s fixin to clear off. Legwater hovered behind him like some dark and ominous bird.

Well, we’ll see ye, Gifford said.

By the meat block Mr Eller dozed with his paper. He had not looked up nor did he now. Come back, he said.

And they were gone. The fly rattled again at the
window. The congress of ancients about the stove stirred one by one. The boy stood uneasily by the meat case. Some of the old men were rolling smokes with their brown papery hands. It was very quiet. He went to the door and stood there for a while. Then he left.

H
er first high yelp was thin and clear as the air itself, its tenuous and diminishing echoes sounding out the coves and hollows, trebling to a high ring like the last fading note of a chime glass. He could hear the boy breathing in the darkness at his elbow, trying to breathe quietly, listening too hard. She sounded again and he stood and touched the boy’s shoulder lightly. Let’s go, he said.

The strung-out ringing yelps came like riflefire. The boy was on his feet. Has she treed yet? he asked.

No. She’s jest hit it now. Then he added: She’s close though, hot. He started down the steep hummock on which they had been resting, through a maze of small pines whose polished needles thick on the ground made the descent a series of precarious slides from trunk to trunk until they got to the gully at the bottom, a black slash in the earth beyond which he could see nothing although
he knew there was a field there, pitched sharply down to the creek some hundred yards further on. He dropped into the gully, heard the beaded rush of sliding dirt as the boy followed, came up the other side and started out through the field at a jog-trot, the heavy weeds popping and his corduroys setting up a rhythmic zip-zip as he ran.

The cottonwoods at the creek loomed up stark and pale out of the darkness; he crossed a low wreck of barbed wire, heard again the resonant creak of the rusty staples in the checked and split cedar post as the boy crossed behind him. They were in the woods above the creek then, rattling through the stiff frosted leaves.

Lady’s sharp trail-call still broke excitedly off to their right. They moved out under the dark trees, through a stand of young cedars gathered in a clearing, vespertine figures, rotund and druidical in their black solemnity. When the man reached the far side, the woods again, he stopped and the boy caught up with him.

Which way is she going? He was trying not to sound winded.

The man paused for just a moment more. Then he said, Same way he is—motioning loosely with his hand. His back melted into the darkness again. The boy moved after him, keeping his feet high, following the sound of the brittle leaves. Their path angled down toward the creek and he could hear at intervals the rush of water, high now after the rain, like the rumble of a distant freight passing.

Watch a log, the man called back to him. He jumped just in time, half stumbled over the windfall trunk, lost his balance, ricocheted off a sapling, went on, holding his head low, straining to see. Trees appeared, slid past with slow gravity before folding again into the murk
beyond. They were climbing now, a long rise, and when he came over the crest he caught a glimpse of the figure ahead of him, framed darkly for an instant against the glaucous drop of sky. Below him he could make out the course of the creek. They dipped into a low saddle in the ridge, rose again, and the man was no longer there. He stopped and listened. Lady’s clear voice was joined by another, lower and less insistent. She was much closer now, quartering down, coming closer. He could follow her progress, listening between the explosions of his breath. Then she stopped.

There was a moment of silence, then the other dog yapped once. Sounds of brush crashing. Two wild yelps just off to his right and then a concussion of water. A low voice at his side said: He’s got her in the creek, come on. The man started down the side of the hill, the boy behind him, and out onto a small flat set in the final slope to the creek and dominated by a thick beech tree. Something was coming down from the ridge above them and they halted. A long shadow swept past in a skitter of leaves and on toward the creek bank. There was one short chopped bark and then a splash. They followed, sidling down the slope and out along the bank where the water gathered a thin membranous light by which they could see, directed by frantic surging sounds and low intermittent growls, some suggestion of figures struggling there, and the new dog striking out in the water now to join them. The fight moved down, out in deep water and under the shadow of the far bank. The snarls stopped and there was only the desperate rending of water.

A light blinked through the trees to their right, went out, appeared again, bobbing, unattached and eerie in the blackness. They could hear the dry frosted crack of
sticks and brush, muted voices. The light darted out, peered again suddenly down upon them, sweeping an arc along the edge of the creek.

Howdy, a voice said.

Cas?

Yeah … that you, Marion?

Bring that light; they’re in the creek.

They came down the slope, four dismembered legs hobbling in the swatch of light as they descended.

Thow your light, Sylder said.

They came alongside, dispensing an aura of pipesmoke and doghair. The shorter one was working the beam slowly over the creek. Whereabouts? he said.

Down some. Howdy, Bill.

Howdy, the other said. In the glare emanating from the flashlight their breath was smoke-white, curling, clinging about their heads in a vaporous canopy. The oval of the flashbeam scudded down the glides against the far bank, passed, backed, came to rest on the combatants clinching in the icy water, the coon’s eyes glowing red, pin points, his fur wetly bedraggled and his tail swaying in crestfallen buoyancy on the current. The big dog was circling him warily, trudging the water with wearying paws and failing enthusiasm. They could see Lady’s ear sticking out from under the coon’s front leg, and then her hindquarters bobbed up, surging through the face of the creek with a wild flash of tail and sinking back in a soundless swirl.

Cas swung the beam to shore, scrabbled up a handful of rock and handed the light to the other man. Hold it on him, he said. He scaled a rock at the coon. It cut a slow arc in the beam and pitched from sight with a muffled slurp. The big hound started for shore and Lady’s tail had made another desperate appearance when
the second rock, a flitting shadow, curving, flashed water under the coon’s face.

He turned loose and struck out downstream, stroking with the current. The big dog, on the other bank now, had set up a pitiful moaning sound, pacing, the man with the light calling to him in a hoarse and urgent voice, Hunt im up, boy, hunt im up. He turned to the men. He’s skeered of rocks, he explained.

Hush a minute, Sylder said, taking the light from him. She was already some thirty yards below them. When the light hit her she turned her head back and her eyes came pale orange, ears fanned out and floating, treading the water down before her with a tired and grim determination. She had her mouth turned up at the corners in a macabre and ludicrous grin as if to keep out the water.

Ho, gal, Sylder called. Ho, gal. They were moving down the creek too, raking through the brush. She’s fixin to drownd herself, someone said.

Ho, gal, Ho …

He never even felt the water. He couldn’t hear them any more, hadn’t heard them call since he left them somewhere back up the creek when he hit the bullbriers full tilt, not feeling them either, aware only of them pulling at his coat and legs like small hands trying to hold him. Then he was over the bank, feet reaching for something and finally skewing on the slick mud, catapulting him in a stifflegged parabola down and out into the water, arms flailing, but not falling yet, not until he had already stopped, teetering thigh-deep, and took a first step out into the current where he collapsed forward like a shot heron.

But he didn’t even feel it. When he came up again he
was in water past his waist, the soft creek floor squirming away beneath his feet as if he were walking the bodies of a colony of underwater creatures clustered there. He could see a little better now. There was no light on the bank and he thought: I come down too far. And no voices, only the sounds of the creek chattering and rocking past all around him. Then he went in again, over his head this time, and came up treading water and with something heavy pushing against his chest. He got his arms under it and lifted. Lady’s head came up and her eyes rolled at him dumbly. He reached and got hold of her collar, the creek bottom coming up and sliding off under his feet, falling backwards now with the dog rolling over him and beginning to struggle, until his leg hit a rock and he reached for it and steadied himself and rose again and began to flounder shoreward with the dog in tow.

They came with the light and Sylder looked at him huddled in the willows, still holding the dog. He didn’t say anything, just disappeared into the woods, returning in a few minutes with a pile of brush and dead limbs.

One of the men was kneeling with him and stroking the dog, examining her. She looks all right, he said, don’t she, son?

He couldn’t get his mouth open so he just nodded. He was beyond cold now, paralyzed.

The other man said: Son, you goin to take your death. We better get you home fore you freeze settin right there.

He nodded again. He wanted to get up but he couldn’t bear the rub of his clothes where he moved.

Sylder had the fire going by then, a great crackling sound as the dry brush took, orange light leaping among the trees. He could see him in silhouette moving about, feeding the blaze. Then he came back. He gathered the
quivering hound up in one arm and motioned for the boy to follow. You come over here, he said. And get them clothes off.

He got up then and labored stiffly after them.

Sylder put the hound by the fire and turned to the boy. Lemme have that coat, he said.

The boy peeled off the leaden mackinaw and handed it over to him. He passed it around the trunk of a sapling, gathered the ends up in his hands and twisted what looked to be a gallon of water out of the loose wool. Then he hung it over a bush. When he looked back the boy was still standing there.

Get em off, he said.

He started pulling his clothes off, the man taking from him in turn shirt and trousers, socks and drawers, wringing them out and hanging them over a pole propped on forks before the fire. When he was finished he stood naked, white as a slug in the cup of firelight. Sylder took off his coat and threw it to him.

Put it on, he said. And get your ass over here in front of the fire.

The two men were behind him in the woods; he could hear them crashing about, see the wink of their light. One of them came back toting a huge log and dropped it on the fire. A flurry of sparks ascended, flared, lost in the smoke pulling at the bare limbs overhead, returned tracing their slow fall redly through the dark trees downwind.